Object-oriented serialization (Was Re: Some questions)

[David Orchard]

I believe there a 3rd way, that is:

Between system wide (meta-grammar) and mapping rules associated with a
schema, there is the third option of a graph-specific set of rules for
associating schemas.  The graph specification language allows arbitrary
graphs and mapping rules for subgraphs of the universe of elements described
a schema.  Thus I could take the same large graph of Java objects and
serialize different subgraphs to different XML documents.  The XML documents
follow any pattern , but the mapping rules are not necessarily 1:1.  In
another case, I could take 2 distinct Java graphs and serialize to the same
XML schema with different "denormalization" in mapping or transforming
between the lhs and rhs.  There can be many mappings or bindings for
arbitrary graph traversals, potentially selected at runtime.

I personally am very interested in graph grammars and would love to hear
about papers on the topic.  A sample that I am interested is a graph grammar
that can be used to specify a graph to traverse from a given starting point.
Typical examples of this are a graph of COM+ or EJB objects to instantiate
for a request, a graph of XLink extended links to retrieve for a given
document, or a graph of XInclude elements to traverse.

Cheers,
Dave Orchard
XLink co-editor

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-xml-dev at ic.ac.uk [mailto:owner-xml-dev at ic.ac.uk]On Behalf Of
> Andrew Layman
> Sent: Monday, December 06, 1999 12:09 PM
> To: XML Developers List
> Subject: RE: Object-oriented serialization (Was Re: Some questions)
>
>
> Thanks.  As a recap: There are, broadly, two approaches to serializing a
> graph in XML.
>
> One is to invent a meta-grammar, a set of canonicalization rules.  That is
> what RDF syntax did, and what the attribute-centric and element-centric
> canonical format papers do, what SOAP section eight does. I think
> of this as
> "tunnelling the graph through XML."
>
> The other is to allow XML documents to follow any pattern described in a
> schema, and augmenting the schema with a set of mapping rules.
>
> There appears to be significant value to each approach. (In particular,
> however, I disagree with the sometimes-asserted claim that graphs capture
> the semantics of a communication while grammars do not.  Graphs are just
> another grammar.  This makes me reluctant to deprecate grammars.)
>
> I agree that formal approaches to mapping would be helpful. I look forward
> to reading your papers.
>
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