RE: Alternatives to XML for RDF?

Thanks for the update Garret.

This highlights a key point I've been trying to make about
the role of XML in RDF -- that to effectively *use* the knowledge
expressed in the RDF/XML, you need to operate on the graph,
in terms of the RDF MT -- not in terms of XML syntax/semantics.

Patrick



> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Garret Wilson [mailto:garret@globalmentor.com]
> Sent: 14 August, 2003 17:24
> To: Stickler Patrick (NMP/Tampere)
> Cc: aredridel@nbtsc.org; www-rdf-interest@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Alternatives to XML for RDF?
> 
> 
> Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com wrote:
> >>-----Original Message-----
> >>From: ext Aredridel [mailto:aredridel@nbtsc.org]
> >>Sent: 13 August, 2003 21:22
> >>To: www-rdf-interest@w3.org
> >>Subject: RE: Alternatives to XML for RDF?
> >>
> >>An easy example of this would be RSS 1.0: I'm not sure if 
> >>there's a spec
> >>for how the XML should be formed, exactly, beyond RDF/XML rules, but
> >>specifying it should be easy:
> > 
> > Defining an XML Schema or DTD for a particular ontology, serialized
> > as RDF/XML is not only doable, but commonly done. An excellent
> > example is XPackage (http://www.xpackage.org) which defines a hybrid
> > model for package definitions which can be interpreted as either XML
> > or RDF.
> > 
> > But that's a *particular* application, and fine (and needed) for
> > validation of particular instances conforming to that particular
> > application. But such things can't be done for RDF/XML in general.
> 
> I've even backed away from this in XPackage. I originally forced 
> XPackage instances to both be RDF compliant and match a supplied XML 
> Schema, simply because some implementors didn't want to be 
> required to 
> implement a fully-blown RDF processor. I've come to realize that 
> requiring XML Schema compliance unnecessarily restricts the 
> things one 
> can do with XPackage.
> 
> XPackage now provides an optional XML Schema so that one can 
> *produce* a 
> compliant XPackage instance without knowing RDF, but still requires a 
> fully compliant RDF processor to *consume* an XPackage instance. XML 
> Schema doesn't allow one to validate the complex logical 
> relationships 
> allowed by RDF.
> 
> Garret
> 
>

Received on Friday, 15 August 2003 05:18:29 UTC