RE: [xsl] Using XSLT to transform XML Schema to RDF

Subject: RE: [xsl] Using XSLT to transform XML Schema to RDF
From: "Michael Kay" <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 22:49:32 +0100
> I am working on a Semantic Web project and have the need to 
> convert complex XML Schema documents into OWL 
> representations. Ilooked around and found a couple of efforts:
> 
>   http://xml2owl.sourceforge.net/
> 
>   http://rhizomik.net/redefer-services/xsl/xsd2owl.xsl
> 
> 
> Neither of which were able to work on the schema documents 
> that I am trying to process:
> 
>   http://schemas.opengis.net/wcs/1.1/
> 

It doesn't greatly surprise me that such efforts don't work on a real schema
document. In my view, trying to write such a process that starts with schema
documents as input is pretty well doomed to failure, because there are so
many different ways of writing the same schema at the surface XML level. You
should take advantage of an existing schema processor that knows how to
translate schema documents into schema components (the abstract internal
model of a schema). If you want to use tools such as XSLT, then you want an
XML representation of the schema components, and one such is the SCM model
exported by Saxon-SA, which is very close to the abstract model described in
the schema specs. (unfortunately, though, it's poorly documented.)

I'm afraid I have no idea what's then involved in converting this to OWL,
but at least the first stage of dealing with surface syntax is out of the
way by then.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

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