Generating Semantically Precise XForms Applications

The NIEM is a federal XML-centric metadata standard created for the
precise exchange of documents. Although the scope of many of the NIEM
sub-domains concerns national security issues, the NIEM is successfully
implemented in other domains, such as K-12 education and property
taxation. The NIEM contains a general "upper ontology" that is
applicable to many other domains that deal with concepts such as
activities, documents, organizations, regions (GIS), and persons.
There are many benefits for beginning a Web application with a
controlled vocabulary or metadata registry such as the NIEM. Metadata
registries contain useful information that can be used to create a
consistent set of XML schemas and forms. Using a metadata registry
also forces users to declare early in the application lifecycle exactly
what data elements they will transmit between organizations. This
article demonstrates how XForms applications can be automatically
created from a NIEM constraint schema, and shows how graphical tools
can allow non-programmers to automatically create rich Web applications
using a model-driven approach. It gives an example of how a short XML
transformation (XSLT) is used to achieve this task and how the
transformation can be modified and extended by developers. By using
NIEM XML Schema structure, naming conventions, and additional metadata,
the transformation task is much easier to extend. Although the example
code included in this article will create working forms, its intent
is a starting point to enable non-programmers to create working XForms
applications. A software developer willing to become familiar with
and modify the transformation can facilitate the extension of the
transform to meet specific business requirements. This transform is
just one of the first steps an IT department can adopt to empower
non-programmers to create precise specifications that automatically
generate correct Web forms. This process and many similar processes
like it are part of the declarative revolution that has great potential
to lower overall IT development costs and empowers a much larger
audience to play a direct role in Web development.

Further Information