RE: [ciq] Re: Element to Element Linking

["David RR Webber \(XML\)" <david@drrw.info>]

Ram,

 

Yeah - I'm deep into these trenches too.

Seems to me that once again we have a hotchpotch of W3C engineered document centric tools that are really not that useful for B2B integration.

 

Again - the key for me is understanding from the business stance WHAT is needed - before embarking on the "how".  In our case - seems like we're hearing need for content linkage, lookups, shared reference values - e.g. customer account information.

 

Technology summary

 

1) xinclude - big issue - cannot deal with fragments of XML - has to be whole XML + namespaces have to be declare.

 

2) xlink - complexity issues, control, security

 

3) hytime - wildly complex - old SGML technology

 

4) semantic overlay - OWL - this is the Web2 technology - but again - not really for content - more for definitions, meaning, rules.

 

5) dumb plain old XML approach - IDref - this is heavily used in CPPA for example - but makes creating XML instances tricky for hand editing - and also limits what you can do with includes and fragments becuase there is no %value% support in XML since the demise of DTDs and entities...  however people have used IDref to point to shared account information in the past - but content has to be local inline in the XML - not remote - so that's problematic.

 

6) Registry-centric approach + REST - this is OASIS technology - not W3C - so that community is not embracing what the registry should be providing here - as witness by Prof Asumans work on combining registry and OWL.  Registry does have all the tools for content management - not just semantics.

 

Bottom line is - OASIS has to roll its own better linking technology and get better support out there in Apache tools.

 

Examples - for now CAM has implemented its own <as:include/> mechanism that fixes the limitations on W3C <xi:include>

 

Also CAM has implemented Registry based linking and lookup approach with UID and LID support along with federated sources and abstraction of the actual communication mechanism (did we mention codelists, versioning and all those issues that Registry solves here?).  This also permits shared secure reference information.  And its implemented as a layer over on top of XML instances - so its non-intrusive.

 

So again - the question is - what are users of CIQ wanting from the business functional stance?

 

If its shared secure reference information content across a community of partners - accounts et al - I'd strongly favour doing this with ebXML Registry - it has all the infrastructure in place to do that - and that is exactly what the IHE/XDS community implementation is doing for healthcare right now. 

 

It also means you can have an implementation addendum to the specification with recommended approaches for communities needs - and not burden the actual CIQ schema with any explicit stuff that is just doing to be a burden.

 

Thanks, DW

 

> -------- Original Message
> --------
> Subject: [ciq] Re: Element to Element Linking
> From: "Ram
> Kumar" <kumar.sydney@gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, August 17, 2006 5:41
> am
> To: ciq@lists.oasis-open.org, "Max Voskob"
> <max.voskob@paradise.net.nz>
>
> This is an interesting
> article about linking resources. Any ideas
> coming out of this
> approach?
>
> Regards,
>
> Ram
>
> On 8/17/06, Ram Kumar
> <kumar.sydney@gmail.com> wrote:
> > XCMTDMW: Element to
> Element Linking
> > Eliot Kimber, Dr. Macro Blog
> >
> >
> This article is one in series of highly informative discussions
> on
> > technologies related to XML Content Management. Kimber
> writes: What do
> > we mean by "linking" in the context of XML
> document processing? The
> > most general definition is "a semantic
> object that establishes a set of
> > one or more relationships among
> uniquely-addressible XML components".
> > This definition is
> reflected by the XLink and HyTime standards, which
> > provide
> syntax and semantics for establishing arbitrarily-complex
> >
> relationships between arbirarily-addressible things. XLink is
> limited
> > to the domain of linking among XML components, HyTime
> provides generic
> > facilities for making anything generically
> addressable and therefore
> > enables linking anything to anything
> via a single standard representation
> > mechanism (groves). A link
> is a semantic relationship whose meaning is
> > independent of how
> the relationship is established. It doesn't matter
> > how a link
> is expressed syntactically in your data: XLink, XIinclude,
> >
> HyTime, HTML, your own 20-year-old link markup... addressing, on
> which
> > semantic linking depends, is entirely syntactic.
> Addressing is the
> > plumbing or mechanics that let you physically
> connect things together:
> > the pointers. The addressing syntax you
> use has many practical
> > implications, including the availability
> of implementations, the cost
> > of implementation and processing,
> the opportunities for interoperation,
> > and so on, but the
> specific syntax you use doesn't affect the meaning
> > of the
> relationships established by the links that do the addressing.
> >
> Clear thinking about linking requires that you be able to make
> a
> > complete and clear distinction between the syntax-independent
> and
> > syntax-specific parts of linking.
> >
> >
> http://drmacros-xml-rants.blogspot.com/2006/07/xcmtdmw-element-to-element-linking.html
> >