Tools, vocabularies and other stuff for an RDF representation of DDI

Mapping DDI to RDF Schema

The ontology is described on: https://github.com/linked-statistics/disco-spec

The plan is the following:

Conceptual mapping from DDI XML to RDF Schema

• Determine the conceptual mappings from XML elements in DDI to RDF classes and properties
• Only a selected subset of DDI's elements is mapped, based on a discovery use case
• Some elements are mapped to new RDF classes and properties in our new vocabulary
• Some elements are mapped to existing vocabularies like SKOS, FOAF, DC, geo

Write down conceptual mapping in declarative form

• Invent a simple XML format to express the conceptual mapping

Instance translator

• The instance translator is an auto-generated XSLT that converts DDI instance XML to RDF
• It is auto-generated from the conceptual mapping XML using another XSLT

RDFS generator

• The RDFS generator takes the conceptual mapping XML and generates RDF Schema documentation
• It may also read from the DDI XML schema files to read the element documentation

Open issues

• Should we in parallel hand-write a first version of the Instance Translator?
• Should we start by focusing on DDI 2.X or 3.X?
• Would we do two conceptual mappings, one for 2.X and one for 3.X?

Acknowledgements

This repository is the result of work that was started at the workshop Semantic Statistics for Social, Behavioural, and Economic Sciences: Leveraging the DDI Model for the Web at Dagstuhl, 11-16 September 2011.

http://www.dagstuhl.de/11372

Contributors include:

• Thomas Bosch
• Benjamin Zapilko
• Olof Olsson

The workshop was organized by:

• Richard Cyganiak (DERI, National University of Ireland - Galway, IE)
• Arofan Gregory (Open Data Foundation - Tucson, US)
• Wendy Thomas (Population Center, University of Minnesota, US)
• Joachim Wackerow (GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, DE)

License

The DDI-RDF DDI-RDF-tools is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.