Relating to other standards

Hi,

That's an interesting and key-issue. I think that the main point here is: to what extent is it acceptable to let the use of the RDF and XML versions drift away? In fact, as it is highlighted in the problem statement, the Semantic Web has a loose structure that allows to combine RDF properties and vocabularies endlessly, and this is what makes it so powerful. So, nothing will stop people from creating their own ontology reusing classes or properties under the namespace prefix "ddi" (for instance saying that void:Dataset owl:sameAs ddi:Dataset). Thus, this is the issue of a static version (XML) versus a "de facto" dynamic version (RDF) of the model. How to keep both aligned? I have no idea, except maybe that we shouldn't try to..and simply accept that RDF allows to use more external vocabularies in a simpler manner that XML does. In other words, accept that a native object from an external standard included in the DDI XSD schemas could not be used in the RDF serialisation of a DDI instance in favour of another equivalent (and maybe more accurate) RDF property, e.g. prov:hadPrimarySource rather than dc:source (this is completely fictional).

Guillaume