R: AGAIN: sharing the data (with XML)

[Sebastian Rahtz]

emilianoscampoli@alice.it wrote:
> XML can represent our archives out of a DBMS and it can be a useful language to interchange our data. Like RSS, an XML file that is formatted with a schema can be read from an application that works like a news aggregator, or from other software that allow us to make queries and search for information. A web service for archaeology would be an instrument that reads and processes all archaeological data formatted with a simple schema placed on the web. But how is possible to make this schema? Is it possible to make a Simple Archaeological Schema that will be used in many countries? 
>   
There are several attempts at this (I think of 
http://www.heritage-standards.org/, and of course the CIDOC stuff), but
its not easy. I'd hesitate to think your suggestion RSS  and embedded 
mini-languages is wise
for serious scientific data, but maybe that would be a cute way of 
proceeding.
> Moreover an XML document with a comprehensible schema can be trasformed in others XML documents with others schemas according to our requirements; shortly 
> desktop(1) DBMS(1)  >  XML(1) with schema (1) on server > XSLT processor > XML(2) with schema (2) in desktop(2) > DBMS (2) > ......
>   
you can do transformations if you are very very sure your two schemas 
describe the same thing and have the same models....

Some of you may be familiar with the Text Encoding Initiative 
(http://www.tei-c.org/). This has been working
for the last 15 years to create and document markup schemes for textual 
and linguistic data. Archaeological
schema writers might like to look at the TEI literate programming scheme 
for authoring and documenting schemas.
Mind you, I would claim that the TEI as it stands can describe a lot of 
archaeological data. You can see
a talk I gave on the subject at
http://tei.oucs.ox.ac.uk/Oxford/2006-09-28-xmlarchaeology/index-0.xhtml

-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      

Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
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