Transforming RDF with XSLT from Dan Connolly on 2000-05-02 (www-rdf-interest@w3.org from May 2000) (original) (raw)

Somebody suggested more people might be interested in this hack, so I wrote a little explanation, and here you go...

========= Transforming RDF with XSLT http://www.w3.org/XML/2000/04rdf-parse/

I'm trying to flesh out some of the details of TimBL's semantic web toolbox... to build some layers on top of RDF such as horn clauses ala SHOE (see SHOE->RDF materials which so far just xhtml-ize SHOE).

In order to connect RDF with other tools to work on practical examples, I needed a parser. XSLT is the hammer I'm using for nails of all shapes and sizes lately, and I figured that once I understand what the output of an RDF parser needs to look like, XSLT is a good platform for experimenting with various input syntaxes.

One of the more quick-and-dirty hacks I've seen in a while is DanBri's JS RDF thingy, based on Jan's tinyprolog, whence comes the output syntax of this parser. There are quite a few other RDF/prolog hacks in the RDF interest group) lately, though I'd rather avoid the closed-world assumption ala Algernon and access-limited logic.

Also, a representation for proofs is an important layer (see Edinborough Logical Framework (larch trait))

What: Contents

 rdfp.xsl the parser itself. 

 Try it out (if you're feeling lucky; this depends on an XSLT

servlet that runs on an as-is, no-warranties basis):

 Address of RDF input: 
               

 Makefile instructions for how to invoke it 
 example 1 from the RDF spec, parsed output 

Bugs and Limitations

These are the sort of dull engineering issues that have straightfoward, if tedious, answers...

 no support for collections 
 no support for quoted (reified) statements 
 no support for parsetype="literal" nor parsetype="resource" 
 only does about 1/3 of the job of reporting bad syntax 
 doesn't expande URI references w.r.t. the base 

Issues raised

These are issues that came up while I was working on this...

One of the reasons for developing this thing was for testing the RDF spec, i.e. to answer some of my own questions about how well-specified RDF is. I found at least one bug, and several interesting corner cases

 suffers from a lack of declared URIs for XML Schema datatypes 
 What URI to use for anonymous nodes? (noodling on skolem

functions...)

Dan Connolly Revision:1.1Revision: 1.1 Revision:1.1 of Date:2000/05/0204:52:47Date: 2000/05/02 04:52:47 Date:2000/05/0204:52:47 by Author:connollyAuthor: connolly Author:connolly

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-- Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Tuesday, 2 May 2000 01:02:02 UTC