RDF Syntax: An XML Schema Approach

• From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
• Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 15:30:38 -0600
• To: www-rdf-comments@w3.org
• CC: www-rdf-interest@w3.org, bert@w3.org
• Message-ID: <3A9584FE.FF29172E@w3.org>

The grammar in the RDF 1.0 spec is informal;
it's not something you can feed to lex/yacc and
get an implementation out of.
In Feb 2000, Rick Jelliffe sketched an XML Schema
for RDF. In August last year, I started using
it with XSV to do online validation of RDF
documents. I wrote up some notes in:
RDF Syntax: An XML Schema Approach 
      in progress Aug 2000
https://www.w3.org/2000/07/DAML-0-5-syntax
esp
   https://www.w3.org/2000/07/rdf.xsd
I suggest this sort of thing be used in
stead of an informal grammar when/if the RDF 1.0
spec is clarified/revised.
It would probably create clutter in the
spec to use XML Schema syntax right in
the text of the spec, so I suggest
using something ala
  A meta-grammar for describing XML-based formats
  Bert Bos; 1, 8 Feb 1999
  https://www.w3.org/People/Bos/meta-bnf
in the spec; the XML Schema could be mechanically
generated from that ala
  A Conversion tool from DTD to XML Schema
  https://www.w3.org/2000/04/schema_hack/
(hmm... we could model the grammar in RDF
while we're at it. But transforming
XML Schemas to RDF and back is a topic
for another message...)
-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C https://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Thursday, 22 February 2001 16:30:41 UTC