Dimensions of Formality: A Case Study for MKM in Software Engineering

Abstract: We study the formalization of a collection of documents created for a Software Engineering project from an MKM perspective. We analyze how document and collection markup formats can cope with an open-ended, multi-dimensional space of primary and secondary classifications and relationships. We show that RDFa-based extensions of MKM formats, employing flexible "metadata" relationships referencing specific vocabularies for distinct dimensions, are well-suited to encode this and to put it into service. This formalized knowledge can be used for enriching interactive document browsing, for enabling multi-dimensional metadata queries over documents and collections, and for exporting Linked Data to the Semantic Web and thus enabling further reuse.