"Multiple" Namespaces? (but NOT for HTML)

[Oren Ben-Kiki]

John Robert Gardner <jrgardn at emory.edu> wrote:
> <GoalScenario>
> Heinrich at Humboldt U. in Berlin is dilligently searching the world's
> various library resources with his Dublin-Core-Based engine for
> <Creator>Tillich</Creator> and we want his DC system to transparently find
> the wealth of Tillich articles we'd have online.  Simultaneously, Alicia
> is using a TEI-based search over in Ireland, and wants to find
> <docAuthor>Tillich</docAuthor>, with the same transparency, and Lu in
> HongKong has GILS, so <Originator>Tillich</Originator> is the formula for
> the query.  With our multiple namespaces/ArchForms/tagbag (see below) or
> whatever, everybody is able to use their native search engine which, in
> turn, is able to find the gems of wisdom sought without any additional
> tweaking on the user--or library administrators'--end.
> </GoalScenario>
>
> "Multiple Namespaces" was a suggestion I had in offline discussions,
> which, of course, "can't" be done, so I'm hoping, at least, that the
> reason for it makes better sense now.

Question: Is it absolutely necessary that the search engines will see the
data as stored in the database, without any processing?

If not, then you could keep your data in whatever format is convenient for
you. Provide multiple "entry points" to the database which present it in DC,
TEI and whichever other DTDs/Schemas are expected by the outside world. Use
XSLT to transform from your internal format to the external format.

The only problem with this is the efficiency of doing the conversion. If it
is very simple, maybe XSLT is an overkill and a simple 'sed' script would be
sufficient. Caching could also help. The cost of conversion might be offset
by the fact that the internal format is optimized for your particular
searches and semantics.

Have fun,

    Oren Ben-Kiki


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