[tdwg-tag] Darwin Core generic XML with attributes

Bob Morris morris.bob at gmail.com
Thu May 20 07:35:33 CEST 2010


Per my discussion in answer to the original problem, I think what you
are tripping on is that the way you want to do this effectively trying
to make a triple with two objects.  I believe it is not really a
modeling question, but rather a question of how RDF/XML is translated
into triples.

Bob Morris

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 9:52 PM, Steve Baskauf
<steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
> This recent discussion reminds me of a question that I have been
> wondering about for several months and hadn't gotten around to bringing
> up: can you have a Darwin Core XML representation where an element has a
> literal value and an attribute? If the XML is RDF, then I think the
> answer is pretty much "no" as I just found out with the W3C Validator.
> However, in generic XML I don't think there is any rule that says that
> one can't have any attribute that one wants.  The only guidance I know
> of on the subject is:
> http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/guides/xml/index.htm#implement
> It states that the value of a Darwin Core property should be the content
> of the element rather than stating the value as an attribute.  However,
> I have the situation where I want to store or transfer two somewhat
> equivalent representations of the value of a property: a string literal
> form and a URI form.  In the example we've been talking about, I would
> like my generic (non-RDF) XML to do something like this:
>
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> <dwr:SimpleDarwinRecordSet
> xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
>                 xmlns:dwc="http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/"
>                 xmlns:dwr="http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/xsd/simpledarwincore/"
>                 >
> <dwr:SimpleDarwinRecord>
>     <dwc:occurrenceID
> rdf:resource="http://herbarium.org/hb123456">http://herbarium.org/hb123456</dwc:occurrenceID>
>     <dwc:recordedBy
> rdf:resource="http://people.vanderbilt.edu/~steve.baskauf/foaf.rdf#me">Steve
> Baskauf</dwc:recordedBy>
>     <dwc:basisOfRecord
> rdf:resource="http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/dwctype/PreservedSpecimen">PreservedSpecimen</dwc:basisOfRecord>
>     ... more elements, mostly with string literal values...
> </dwr:SimpleDarwinRecord>
> </dwr:SimpleDarwinRecordSet>
>
> This would meet the basic guidelines of the Darwin Core XML Guide in
> that the literal values would be the contents of the elements.  What I
> don't know is if the inclusion of the rdf:resource attributes would
> invalidate the XML if it were validated against someone's schema that
> was silent about attributes or if the schema would have to explicitly
> say that having an rdf:resource attribute was a valid option.  I think I
> don't know enough about XML schemas ...
>
> The reason why I would like to maintain/transfer both types of values
> (literal and URI) is so that I could use the XML data to generate both
> HTML and RDF if I wanted.  The HTML would tell humans that the
> occurrence was a PreservedSpecimen, but the RDF would tell a linked data
> client that the occurrence was a
> http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/dwctype/PreservedSpecimen .  I realize that for
> my own internal use, the XML can have any format I want, but if I were
> exporting XML for general public use, would it be bad to use the
> approach above?
>
> Steve
>
> As an aside, I wanted to see exactly what the definition was for
> rdf:resource  However, the usual namespace for rdf:
> (http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#) doesn't seem to include
> "resource" in the defined properties.  Very odd!  Maybe I'm just missing
> something...
>
> --
> Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
> Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
>
> postal mail address:
> VU Station B 351634
> Nashville, TN  37235-1634,  U.S.A.
>
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>
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> http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
>
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>



-- 
Robert A. Morris
Emeritus Professor  of Computer Science
UMASS-Boston
100 Morrissey Blvd
Boston, MA 02125-3390
Associate, Harvard University Herbaria
email: ram at cs.umb.edu
web: http://bdei.cs.umb.edu/
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http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram
phone (+1)617 287 6466



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