For any developer or designer creating XML and searchable Web documents,
Professional XML Meta Data covers the essential XML-based standards and concepts that will facilitate the emerging "semantic Web" of the near future. Mixing the practical side of existing standards with a bit of prognostication of this evolving technology, this ambitious book casts a wide net to highlight some standards that may very well play a role in the evolution of the Internet.
Now that XML has gone mainstream with systems like the UK Government Interoperability Framework (a system mentioned early here), standards for creating searchable content are fast becoming important. This book shows you how, with a mix of technologies that are here right now, and some technologies that are farther down the road. A good practical reason to buy this text is to get a working knowledge of the Resource Description Framework (RDF), a standard used today to label and search content from disparate vendors. After a quick review of basic XML standards including XML Schemas, XPath, and XPointer for getting around the XML-powered Internet, this volume digs in with a worthwhile tutorial to basic RDF, including the so-called Dublin Core (from Ohio, not Ireland, a standard for tagging documents with basics like creator, title, subject, and date), plus using the SAX API to parse RDF.
This text then ranges farther afield into the ideas and evolving standards that will help usher in the "semantic Web," starting with XML-based topic maps, which can help categorize XML content. More ambitious efforts like Meaning Definition Language (MDL) are surely more speculative and theoretical, but it's a strength of this book that it takes on some leading-edge academic standards and tools to point the way forward. (As the authors themselves note, not all of the technologies covered here are likely to be around in five years, but some undoubtedly will.) Intriguing topics on automatically generating topic maps and using Schematron for data mining offer a glimpse into the future.
Though at times densely packed with XML terminology, Professional XML Meta Data outlines some leading-edge tools and techniques that will surely affect the future Web. It's a challenging resource, perfect for the early adopters of the "semantic Web" who will need to contend with these new XML standards and tools for searching and categorizing XML-based data. --Richard Dragan
Topics covered: Introduction to XML Metadata, metadata and the UK Government Interoperability Framework (including the Dublin Core for tagging documents), defining document structure with XML Schemas and DTDs, overview of XML linking and querying (XLink, XPointer, and XInclude), the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and syntax, RDF Schema (hierarchy of types, elements and constraints, extensions), RDF parsers (including a sample RDF parser framework using SAX), XML topic maps (XTM), the semantic Web and Meaning Definition Language (MDL), metadata architectures (including forms and embedded metadata), centralized and distributed external metadata, the Meta Data Processing Framework (MDF), advanced topic maps/RDF (automated topic map construction, combining RDF with topic maps), Schematron (data mining, associations and topic maps), process description and the Process Specification Language (PSL), inferencing systems, advanced metadata use cases, self-describing XML files, and a glossary of metadata terms.
This book is for developers who are familiar with basic XML concepts and are seeking new methods for building data/process descriptions, resource discovery/retrieval, and exchanging/sharing information. Many of the topics covered are pioneering technologies that will soon be implemented in the mainstream - if you want to get ahead of the game and learn about tomorrow's technologies today then this book is for you.
This book covers:
How DTDs and XML Schemas can be used for resource discovery
The latest developments in XML querying and linking
RDF Syntax, Model, and Schema put into practice
How to build, share, and process XTM topic maps
Initiatives such as Meaning Definition Language and Schematron
Concepts behind more sophisticated search engines based on inferencing
Extracting and using meta data to enhance utility of databases
Designing XML meta data vocabularies to describe discrete processes
