2R/outline proposal
From Leapspecs
Belongs to Leap2R
Outline proposal
Extending Leap2A to cover RDF, and particularly RDFa, has been talked about for quite some time, and people seem generally positive about the idea. Volunteers are being brought together to guide and collaborate in this development, of what we are provisionally calling "Leap2R".
There are three main envisaged purposes for this work.
- Firstly, and most immediately, it would enable the information stored in a portfolio tool to be displayed, complete with formatting, directly in a browser, but with the very same XHTML representation able to be imported by a portfolio tool with all the power and precision of Leap2A.
- Secondly, it would enable portfolio information to be stored as RDF triples and manipulated in the ways of the Semantic Web, for example being queried by SPARQL. SPARQL queries will only be able to be effectively constructed on the basis of a clear definition of how portfolio information is to be represented in RDF.
- Thirdly, it would provide a more effective basis for the disaggregation (and subsequent reaggregation) of portfolio information to be stored across any number of places.
To achieve these aims, we would want to accomplish several tasks. Here is a first guess at a list of these tasks.
- For each construct in Leap2A, work out how to represent it as triples, using:
- the resource types listed at 2009-03/Leap2A types;
- the properties/predicates listed at 2009-03/Leap2A predicates;
- any more resource types that are needed for convenient blank nodes.
- Document this, and define domain and range constraints for each property/predicate
- Write an XSLT transform from Leap2A to Leap2R (probably not too hard to produce some reasonable xhtml+rdfa)
- Detail a way of converting Leap2R to Leap2A. The Leap2R could be extracted to an intermediate RDF triples representation (such as Turtle) using standard tools. We would then need a method of converting the triples into Leap2A. That shouldn't be impossible.
- Write guidelines for the use of Leap2R -- in effect, the specification. There will be no new technical standards, as RDF and RDFa exist already, but we need to spell out conventions for and constraints on the RDF to ensure that it was:
- convertible to Leap2A;
- importable/usable by actual portfolio tools.
There might be other sensible tasks, such as defining how to use Leap2R with other XML languages (in a GRDDL sort of way), e.g. ODF, but these could well be treated as separate initiatives worked on by smaller sub-groups.
It is proposed to carry on the discussion through the PORTFOLIO-INTEROPERABILITY-WORK@jiscmail.ac.uk list.
