XSD: Proposed Goals, Rev. 3

[Peter Murray-Rust]

At 21:14 28/05/98 -0400, Paul Prescod wrote:
[...]
>
>Tim's point is that a schema *is* metadata. If we accept that, and we 
>consider RDF to be a complete and sufficent metadata framework, then we 
>should implement XSchema as an RDF application. I'll have to think about 
>this more.

I think that we should defer the question of how we support an XSchema
until we have decided what it is. The "is it data - is it metadata" debate
will always be with us. For my simple-minded point of view if I write:
<ElementType id="foo">
	<Attribute id="bar">
		<Type>CDATA</Type>
	</Attribute>
</ElementType>

I am perfectly happy to treat this as 'data'. I have tools that will edit
this, display it, verify it, etc. I can't at present - see what recasting
this in RDF will do for me. Moreover, if I did, I wouldn't have any tools
to work with the RDF.

I suspect that we shall always be able to transform *simple* XSchemas into
RDF algorithmically. If this can't be done, then we are already too
complicated. I am worried about being required to use an approach which is
still under development and where there are no tools - I don't think we
need it at this stage.

	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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