Subject: [CODE4LIB] Addressing fragments of a resource in RDF

From: Andrew Ashton <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 08:46:50 -0500

This isn¹t library-specific, but there seems to be enough common interest
that is it worth posting here

I¹m looking for good ways to address fragments of a XML resource in a RDF
expression.  Specifically, I¹m talking about pointing at an Xpath, something
like this:

<rdf:RDF>
  <rdf:about='http://seasr.brown.edu/conceptMap.owl#TEI_names''>
    <teiSeasr:concept
rdf:resource='http://www.example.edu/myTei.xml#xpointer(/TEI/teiHeader/profi
leDesc/particDesc/listPerson/person/persName)' />
  </rdf:about>
</rdf:RDF>

 Xpointer is an obvious option, but my impression is that it is dead in the
water, and isn¹t seeing much use or development.  And I realize that this
approach compromises the resourceiness of the RDF, but the use case here is
pretty much limited to a single application framework.  I¹m hoping to keep
it all in RDF without having to add another layer of abstraction.

The big difference between this case and the typical
http://domain/name#identifier example is that #identifier is assumed to be a
stable entity, whereas the xpath in this case is fuzzy  there could be
many, or no, persName elements.  So, any good options aside from Xpointer?

Thanks, Andy

--
Andrew Ashton
Senior Research Programmer
Center for Digital Scholarship, Brown University Library