RE: [Refdb-users] Importing RisX into RefDB

[Alan A. <al...@ru...>]

> Bruce D'Arcus writes:
>  > I could see getting rather confused (as I currently do with RIS), if I
>  > have to enter reference types such as a hearing or a bill or a movie or
>  > an unpublished archival manuscript.  Shouldn't it be possible to make
>  > this easier, while at the same time maintaining compatibility with the
>  > current data model?
>  >
>
> This is the key problem of this approach. I'm afraid we'll have to
> develop some sort of strict mapping between the more logical
> possibilities in an updated risx.dtd and the data model used in
> RefDB. Otherwise you might lose information on a round-trip. I'll look
> into that as soon as time permits.


I might be missing the point, but isn't one of the advantages of XML the ability to EASILY convert
between data definitions.  If you leave risx as simple as possible, i.e. a one-to-one mapping
between the XML tags and the RIS tags, then define additional DTDs as needed for your
application--i.e. type of reference.  Once the DTD is defined, you create a stylesheet to convert
between the two.  In this way, Bruce can define a "movie" DTD which maps the director to A2 and
back, and I, someone who's never likely to use a movie record, don't need to be confused by 20 or 30
attributes on the author tag which I'll never use.

There is the question of standardization and interchange, but (and correct me if I'm wrong) there
are other ways to do this.  Besides, RIS doesn't seem to be designed to be an end-all solution for
reference information, it seems to be a SIMPLE implementation.  IMHO, RefDB, and thus risx, should
maintain flexibility but remain SIMPLE.  Leave some of the complication to the user, because in the
end they are the only one who really knows what the data means, and the conversion to RIS is going
to need to be done eventually to get the information into the database.

It may also be possible to collect these DTDs and stylesheets into a collection of common
conversions that can be distributed with RefDB. In this way you can develop a (de facto) standard
way of converting/interpreting different reference types.  The experts in movie (or whatever)
references can focus on movie (or whatever) references without breaking RefDB or risx.

Al