Roger,
I'm only just catching up with some of this myself, but I believe that you really need RDF Schema or OWL to define the constraints on semantically acceptable documents. Plain RDF and XML Schema will only allow you to constrain this kind of document to what is syntactically valid for RDF.
Donald
--------------------------------------------------------------- Donald Hobern (dhobern@gbif.org) Programme Officer for Data Access and Database Interoperability Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark Tel: +45-35321483 Mobile: +45-28751483 Fax: +45-35321480 ---------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message----- From: tdwg-tapir-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-tapir-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Roger Hyam Sent: 30 December 2005 11:52 To: tdwg-tapir@lists.tdwg.org Subject: [tdwg-tapir] Output model definition and mixed name spaces.
Hi Everyone,
In the few days between Christmas and New Year I am doing some thinking about architecture and the general problem of validating (controlling) data alongside using a more RDF based approach. This is an open world / closed world problem really but relates to Tapir as follows. Suppose I want to specify an output model like this:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf = "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#" xmlns:vCard = "http://www.w3.org/2001/vcard-rdf/3.0#%22%3E rdf:Description dc:creator <rdf:Description rdf:about = "http://qqqfoo.com/staff/corky" > rdfs:label Corky Crystal </rdfs:label> vCard:FN Corky Crystal </vCard:FN> <vCard:N rdf:parseType="Resource"> vCard:Family Crystal </vCard:Family> vCard:Given Corky </vCard:Given> vCard:Other Jacky </vCard:Other> vCard:Prefix Dr </vCard:Prefix> </vCard:N> vCard:BDAY 1980-01-01 </vCard:BDAY> </rdf:Description> </dc:creator> </rdf:Description> </rdf:RDF>
This is taken from: http://dublincore.org/documents/dcq-rdf-xml/#sec3 and is a good example or using a mix of 'other' vocabularies to describe something. DublinCore and vCard are pretty standard and should really not be re-invented.
I can't see how to define this structure in a simple XML Schema. It only allows a single target namespace so one needs to have at least 4 XSD documents (1 + 3 imported) to define this tightly. Here is an example of how to do this kind of thing:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-tipschnm.html
We have the additional problem that there aren't actual public XML Schema definitions of these things so one would have to make up schemas defining the elements used. It all gets quite horrible.
Does the subset of XML Schema in Tapir support imports?
Tapir has the intention of combining separate 'concepts' (which implies different namespaces) into a single output model but do the concepts all have to be mapped into a single namespace to make the thing workable?
I may be missing something obvious with XML Schema or Tapir (or both) in which case I would be grateful if some one could set me right. I will blame it all on an excess of rich food and red wine over the past few days.
Many thanks for your thoughts.
Happy New Year,
Roger