Open AccessA formal approach to XML semantics: implications for archive standards
Author(s) -
Andrew Dombrowski,
Quinn Dombrowski
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
balisage series on markup technologies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Conference proceedings
ISSN - 1947-2609
DOI - 10.4242/balisagevol6.dombrowski01
Subject(s) - computer science , xml schema editor , document structure description , xml validation , xml schema (w3c) , information retrieval , document type definition , programming language , relax ng , xml , schema (genetic algorithms) , cxml , semantics (computer science) , world wide web
Previous literature characterizing XML semantics ( Sperberg-McQueen et al. 2000 , Renear et al. 2002 , Piez 2002 ) takes reasonably syntactically and semantically plausible markup and/or schemas as a starting point. In contrast, for this paper we aim to work towards such a schema as an idealized end goal, by characterizing the necessary— if not sufficient— semantic constraints that differentiate a schema intended for archival use from nonsense and implausible schemas, as well as schemas that fail to sufficiently take semantics into account. In addition to the goal of providing a novel approach to the perenially thorny problem of XML semantics, we are particularly concerned with the interaction between the goals of archival purposes and XML semantics.