Meaning of nameOfClass

[Interoperable-data]

It seems that NeTEx uses nameOfClass to carry explicit class metadata in XML instances. This way of supporting model-driven design and enabling loosely coupled, schema-independent processing across distributed systems. It more or less mimics RDF's ability for having data describe itself.

So in XML, we can see something like this:

<StopPlace id="SP1" nameOfClass="StopPlace"/>

With our xsd2rdf convertet, the XSD would be converted into SHACL/OWL/SKOS where the implemented data would look like this:

:SP1 a netex:StopPlace;
	netex:nameOfClass netex-skos:StopPlace .

This is obviously redundant. And probably it's also already redundant in the XSD source. Or maybe it happens to have something like this:

<Entity id="SP1" nameOfClass="StopPlace"/>

In which case the RDF would be:

:SP1 a netex:Entity;
	netex:nameOfClass netex-skos:StopPlace .

Question: Why is it needed in the latest version of NeTEx v2.0?

[skinkie]

The nameOfClass and nameOfRefClass allow finding of which type has been specified. Within NeTEx itself nothing is forcing an id to be object type unique. Hence StopPlace id="1" version="1" and ScheduledStopPoint id="1" version="1" are unique based on being different object types.

When there is some form of inhertance such as TimingPoint -> ScheduledStopPoint -> FareScheduledStopPoint, a TimingPointRef may point to a FareScheduledStopPoint my expilicitly setting nameOfRefClass="FareScheduledStopPoint".

Specifically when references have been designed as abstract like FromPointFrom and ToPointRef nameOfRefClass must be explicitly set.

So to conclude, the triplet (nameOfClass, id, version) are the actual key in references.