RE: Transforming XML content into RDF assertions

>Paul Prescod wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>> So don't use XSLT. Renaming elements and attributes from RSS to RDF does
>> not (IMO) require the power of an infoset-based, random access,
>> Turing-complete language.
>>
>>  http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200201/msg01629.html

This looks like it should make an economical substitute for much of what's
done using XSLT - I eagerly await an implementation.

Having said that, although this covers most things (including RSS) I don't
think it can cover all bases. That XSLT is Turing-complete says it will
cover all bases (optimistically assuming there are no holes in the XML and
RDF models), but in a lot of cases this might turn into a very messy
approach. In particular, if the source XML contains internal/external links
(grove-like) then mapping these to a graph gets tricky without real
graph-awareness in the transformation language.

Personally I reckon a two-stage process is likely to be the best general
approach. First of all transform the tree into a graph, with arbitrarily
labelled arcs mapped from links in the source. Then a correspondent of XSLT
(a graph-graph declarative transformation language, specified in RDF) using
the (mythical) RDFPath language is used to transform the graph.
I've experimented a bit in this area (I'm sure others have too), and am
reasonably convinced this stuff's doable - pretty much of the problems
should already been solved in xml+rdf and graph theory. Another
implementation I eagerly await ;-)

Cheers,
Danny.

Received on Monday, 7 October 2002 05:34:16 UTC