XML Semantics

Abstract

In this chapter, we consider the problem of checking the consistency of the semantics associated with extensible markup language (XML) documents. We propose a novel technique to add semantics to XML documents by attaching semantic information to the XML element tag attributes. We call this technique XML semantics. It is based on the same concept as attribute grammars (AGs), attaching and checking static semantics of programming languages through their attributes. Furthermore, we show how the attribute dependencies in this approach can be expressed in the SLXS language. The SLXS language is a new description language based on XML; we have designed it to describe the semantic dependencies of XML documents. By this approach we remain compliant with the XML core technology. Finally, we give a practical example to illustrate the power of our approach: we have successfully applied this approach to check the semantic consistency of the several holy books that are mentioned on the Religion 2 Website.