[Zope3-dev] Re: Better access to APIs in paths (was Re: needingviewsclues - template/title troubles)

[Shane Hathaway]

Eric Roby wrote:
> We are using Zope as our foundation for developing Semantic Web solutions
> which entail developing/managing/distributing knowledge bases.  Working with
> namespaces is crutial.  Currently, we develop these ontologies (abstract
> classes) outside of Zope, export them as RDF-S ( our data model) , run them

Ooh, so an ontology is an abstract class?  (Understanding seeps in) 
THANK YOU! :-)

> through a python application which translates the RDF-S into python classes
> which are hosted within Zope as a product.  We are about to begin merging
> ontologies to make new ontologies which means that we now have multiple
> namespaces to deal with.  All these details of multiple namespaces is hidden
> by the Zope product.  We intend to be able to leverage inference engine
> search technology and to do that we need to be able to publish the instance
> data back out as RDF, OWL and DAML-OIL. These are currently just handled as
> views via controllers.  In addition, we also have to be able to geospatially
> enable the knowledge bases.  This requires adding (yet) another namespace
> based on GML (Geography Mark-up Language). Namespaces are crutial...
> 
> The point of this ramble is that I think Shane is right-on here... xml
> namespaces must be able to be handled in the most natural way possible.
> dc:title or FGDC:title or FGDCBII:title makes absolute sense to anyone
> involved with Semantic Web.  I don't know enough about Zope 3 to understand
> if it will make our efforts more productive in this regard.  The notion of
> being able to create API's specific to namespaces we develop sounds very
> intriguing.  Part of our efforts goes into developing validation methods to
> provide element level quality control.  Unless I am mis-interpreting the
> context of this whole thread - our QC methods could be roled up and exposed
> to our knowledge bases as an API.  Am I totally out to lunch here???

You're thinking right along the same path that I am.  To anyone who has 
studied recent publications by the W3C, something like "dc:title" is so 
natural that there's hardly a better way to write it.  XML namespaces 
would give both newbies and experienced developers a lot of simplicity 
and productivity--users wouldn't even have to know about components 
until they're ready to learn, while namespaces give experienced 
developers the expressive power to say exactly what they want and 
nothing more.

But I'm done with this thread.  Maybe this just isn't the right time for 
this to happen. :-(

Shane