Product Description

As we have an increasing amount of information available in electronic formats, we need a way of dealing with and managing the volume of data we store and exchange. To help us do this we can use meta data, which is simply data about data. XML's extensibility and interoperability make it an ideal format for meta data that is part of a scheme of sharing data between multiple sources. As concepts such as "the semantic web" and web services move closer to reality, a knowledge of meta data and how to use it will be of huge advantage.

There have been a number of recent developments in the field of XML meta data, and Professional XML Meta Data takes a look at some of the initiatives at the bleeding edge of the XML meta data world. In this book you will see how schemas, topic maps, RDF, and inferencing can be put to use in the field of data description, discovery, and exchange.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #213810 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 600 pages

Amazon.com Review
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.

From the Publisher
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

About the Author
David Dodds has been writing code and teaching computing science at University for a while. He has been working the last few years on the various emerging XML technologies and has been on the W3C SVG workgroup to develop the specification for SVG 1.0; and on the early committee to develop XML Topic Map specification. David has published numerous papers in robotics and in fuzzy systems. He works on systems of representation, designing UKL Unified Knowledge Language, and pursues designs of systems of meta data and meta-programming representation.

Andrew Watt is an independent consultant. He has focused on the power of Web-relevant technologies including Lotus Domino, Java and HTML. His current interest is in the various applications of the Extensible Markup Meta Language, XMML, sometimes imprecisely and misleadingly called XML. The present glimpse he has of the future of SVG, XSL-FO, XSLT, CSS, XLink, XPointer etc when they actually work properly together is an exciting, if daunting, prospect. He has just begun to dabble with XQuery.

Mark Birbeck is Technical Director of Parliamentary Communications Ltd. where he has been responsible for the design and build of their political portal, ePolitix.com. He is also managing director of XML consultancy x-port.net Ltd., responsible for the publishing system behind spiked-online.com. Although involved in XML for a number of years, his special interests lie in metadata, and in particular the use of RDF.

Jay Cousins is an Analyst/Consultant at RivCom, a consultancy specialising in helping businesses adopt XML technologies for the creation, management and distribution of information. Jay works in information analysis and modeling, specializing in the development of NewsML and XML based architectures.

Daniel Rivers-Moore is Director of New Technologies at RivCom, a UK-based consultancy specializing in helping companies and organizations adopt leading-edge technologies for information management and delivery. Daniel was actively involved from the outset in the development of XML and its related technologies. He has served as Joint Project Leader of the STEP/SGML Harmonization initiative for bringing together technical documents with engineering data, and is editor of NewsML, the XML-based standard for the management and delivery of multimedia news.

Dr Robert Worden is a consultant with Charteris plc in London, specialising in project management and large-scale data architectures. Previous to this he worked for Logica, building relational database management system and expert systems for medical diagnosis, going on to managing Logica's advanced research centre at Cambridge.

Danny Ayers is a network consultant and freelance author, generally occupied with Java and web-related tasks.

Kal Ahmed is a founder member of TopicMaps.Org and a contributor to the XTM 1.0 specification.

Josh Lubell works at US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) where he applies markup technology towards solving data exchange problems between manufacturing applications. He is a contributor to various standards efforts and speaks regularly at XML-related conferences.

Customer Reviews

THE book for XML metadata technologies.
If you need to know about the latest XML metadata technologies or concepts like the Semantic Web and machine readable metadata, you need this book. I found it very useful in explaining RDF (there are three excellent chapters on RDF) and Topic Maps, which are potentially difficult subjects to understand. The book also suggests some interesting uses for metadata in the future, and has a useful chapter on extracting metadata from databases.

Learn lots of new interesting things happening in XML World!
By now, I guess most of IT professionals have atleast heard about XML and know what problems XML can help solve, however it's challenging to keep up with fast evolving technologies around XML, like RDF, Topic Maps, Schemas, etc. I myself had heard about these technologies, but didn't quite understand them fully till I read Professional XML Meta Data from Wrox. As far as I know, this is the only book available in the market today that covers technologies useful for data description, discovery and exchange, in so much detail. The book covers XML Schemas, XML Linking and Querying, both the RDF specifications, Topic Maps and more. All the topics are explained in detail, the book is very well connected and the chapters flow nicely in sequence. I personally liked the final chapter "Advanced Meta Data Use Cases" that covers couple of areas where meta data can enhance the applications.

Minimal coupling, minimal cohesion
If you're looking for in-depth detailed information on RDF, XML Schema, DAML + OIL etc., then don't buy this book.
If you're interested in DAML + OIL, and applications of it, then you don't want this book. (It covers DAML + OIL, but only touches its surface.)
If you want to read about new standars rising from the XML community, and you don't have any particular preference, then this might be a book you like.
If you can't cope with minimal cohesion, then you definitely should not buy this book. There's no single message in this book.