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

Tue, 25 Feb 2003 15:11:04 -0500

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
> 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???

So let me get this straight. Given what you obviously know about xml
namespaces, you are telling me that you woould find it natural to see something
like this:

   <body tal:namespace="dc zope://zope.app.dublincore">
      ...

      <p tal:content="dc:title">Title here</p>

      ...

   </body>

Notice that the connection with xml namespaces is pretty superficial:

- The namespace prefix is applied inside an attribute value

- The namspace is declared with a tal attribute, not an xml namespave
   attribute.

Also note that this has nothing whatsoever to do with supporting xml
namespaces.

Jim

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