XSD: Proposed Goals, Rev. 3

[Andrew Layman]

Another possible interpretation of Tim Brays's mail would be that it asks,
not whether XML schemas might be supplemented/described by metadata using
RDF facilities, but whether the model and syntax of an XML schema should be
explicitly RDF (as described in http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-rdf-syntax/).

(As I use the terms, "metadata" means descriptive information summarizing or
supplementing a document, while "schema" means a collection of named items
and their definitions, which names and definitions are necessary for
understanding the document.  For example, a card catalog entry and a book
review are both metadata (relative to the book) while a dictionary and
grammar are schema.)

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Murray-Rust [mailto:peter at ursus.demon.co.uk]
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 1998 3:43 PM
To: Xml-Dev (E-mail)
Subject: Re: XSD: Proposed Goals, Rev. 3


At 11:33 28/05/98 -0700, Tim Bray wrote:
>At 03:56 PM 5/28/98 UT, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
>>A revised set of goals for XSD follows, based on public and private
comments.  
>
>One piece of input; I note a resounding silence on the subject of RDF.

I thought it had been mentioned - and positively - but maybe private mail.

My take is:

We do not intend to overlap with RDF if we can avoid it - we want the
systems to be complementary.  Since I imagine that RDF metadata will be
ubiquitous (i.e. every responsible XML document author will include
RDF-based metadata) I assume that XSchemas will include RDF-based metadata.
There seem to be two ways this might occur:
	- metadata "at the head of the XShema" - what is this XSchema about
- who
owns it - how can it be used - who has validated it, etc
	- metadata that the XSchema might provide for documents or their
authors -
help, links, etc.

My feeling - at this early stage - was that we are certainly not inventing
a new syntax for metadata (even in a very limited fashion) but we are
thinking about the metacontent that an XSchema might deliver. I would be
very hesitant at this stage of providing anything much more than name-value
metadata. 

I have no problem with many contentSpecs in an XSchema including RDF:*, but
how it might be used is probably too early. In any case we have to be very
careful not to overstretch what we are doing.

	P.


Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic
net connection
VSMS http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms, Virtual Hyperglossary
http://www.venus.co.uk/vhg

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