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Sixml

Superimposed information (SI) is new information created in relation to fragments of existing base information (BI), and stored separately from BI. For example, a reader's annotation about a text region in a PDF document or an image in an HTML page can be superimposed information; the annotated PDF document and HTML page constitute base information.

Sixml (pronounced 'siks-&-m&l or 'siks-m&l) is SI represented as XML. It provides a means of embedding, in XML, references to BI regardless of BI type and granularity, independently of the protocol used to reference BI.

Sixml can be used to represent and manipulate data in any application that manages superimposed information. It is also useful in applications such as mash-ups that integrate heterogeneous data on the fly. For example, an annotation application called the Superimposed Scholarly Review System (SISRS), and the mash-up framework Mash-o-matic both use Sixml.

• XML Schema definitions to express links as marks in arbitrary XML documents.

• Sixml DOM, an extension to the W3C Document Object Model (DOM) to represent and manipulate Sixml data at run time.

• A system of serializing Sixml data.

• Bi-level query, a mechanism to combine Sixml data with the referenced BI and query the combined bi-level information in existing query languages.

The following publications and web sites provide some background on SI.

• Superimposed information for the Internet

• Bundles in Captivity: An Application of Superimposed Information

• Putting Integrated Information in Context: Superimposing Conceptual Models with SPARCE

• The Superimposed Pluggable Architecture for Contexts and Excerpts (SPARCE)

Sixml was conceived by Sudarshan Murthy. The term superimposed information was coined by Professors David Maier and Lois Delcambre. Sixml activity is currently sponsored by The Else Institute.

Last edited: October 18, 2011