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CONTENTTRANSFORMATION 693Innovative research and studies
Innovative technology
Rapid response activities
Regional strategic planning
Rural solutions
Staff collaboration
Successful marketing strategies
Training program
Urban/Suburban solutions
Youth development
Service area
City
County
Multi-cities
Multi-counties
Multi-states
National
State
TribalOther controlled vocabularies such as thesauri and
glossaries function similarly as taxonomies in slightly dif-
ferent ways. Thesauri are particularly useful in represent-
ing term relationships. Through the “broader term,” “nar-
rower term,” and “related term” references, each term in
a thesaurus is placed in a covert hierarchical structure
and related to similar concepts. Glossaries, thesauri, and
taxonomies are often used together to specify data defini-
tions, preferred terms for indexing, and domain subject
classes.Encoding of Metadata and Taxonomies
Metadata schemes and taxonomies provide the semantics
for representing data about Web content. As any digital
content, they need a format for the computer to under-
stand and manipulate. Conventionally, data elements in
a metadata scheme are converted into data structures in
a database. Taxonomies are also stored in a database for-
mat. The current trend is to encode these representations
in XML format. XML describes a class of data objects
called XML documents and partially describes the behav-
ior of computer programs that process them (W3C, 2000).
Unlike HTML that codes data for display (Listing 1), XML
codes data for processing (Listing 2). Documents coded
in XML format can tell the computer what content the
data in between the tags is, so that the program can in-
voke the right processing instruction for this piece of data.
Metadata coded by XML does not include any presenta-
tion information—it is separate from presentation. The
main benefit of this separation is that it allows more se-
mantics in the data representation and ease of data com-
munication among systems. Another benefit is that the
XML-coded data bears some structure through nesting
(Listing 3). In Listing 3, the Book element may repeat to
represent more books and the Author element to represent
more authors if more than one author wrote the book.<h1>Workforce development</h1>
<h2>Employer partners</h2>
<p>Quest Corporation</p>
<p>Riceland Foods, Inc.</p><h2>Program performance</h2>
<p>number of graduates: 230</p>
<p>Program duration: January 2000-present
</p>
Listing 2:HTML Code for Data Display<program>
<title>Workforce development</title>
<employerPartner id="1">Quest
Corporation</employerPartner>
<employerPartner id="2">Riceland Foods,
Inc.</employerPartner>
<performance>
<numberOfGraduates>230
</numberOfGraduates>
</performance>
<programDuration>January 2000-present
</programDuration>
</program>
Listing 3:XML Code for Data Processing<Catalog>
<Book>
<Title>XML Stylesheet Language
</Title>
<Authors>
<Author>John Brown</Author>
</Authors>
<Publisher>AZ Publishing
</Publisher>
<PubDate>May 2002</PubDate>
<ISBN>1-234567-89-0</ISBN>
</Book>
</Catalog>
Listing 4:XML Document for the Book Catalog ExampleCONTENT TRANSFORMATION
The ultimate goal of representing and organizing Web
content is to deliver the content effectively and efficiently,
so that users can retrieve the right content at the right
time. Web content can be delivered based on personal
profiling, the task to be performed, or the information to
be communicated. The delivery is a technology-intensive
process since documents and data stored in databases
or XML file systems need to be rendered into the for-
mats viewable via a desktop browser, mobile phone,
automobile-based personal computer, or hand-held PC.
The content is also expected to be able to serve multi-
ple purposes across enterprise Web sites. For instance,
the product data may be rendered into an online catalog,
shown in an online purchase order, or delivered as a mar-
keting e-mail.
XML documents can be presented through two kinds
of stylesheets: the cascading style sheet (CSS) and the ex-
tensible stylesheet language (XSL). CSS is divided into
Level 1 and Level 2, both of which are W3C recommen-
dations. CSS can be used as internal stylesheets embed-
ded in HTML documents or external URIs linked to the