The NCSU project team decided to write (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) XSLT files for the conversion process due to the author's familiarity with the language and for the ease with which XSLT handles XML and HTML files as input and output files. Oxygen XML Editor 15.2 was used for writing the XSLT files and for the subsequent processing of the XML data with the XSLT files to produce the RDF serialization files. We had originally planned to upload our data into a Sesame(http://www.openrdf.org/) triple store, which is a type of database designed for storing and manipulating RDF data.After uploading our RDF data, the NCSU project team planned to use Sesame's output function to produce some of the more challenging serializations, such as N3/Turtle,but eventually decided to write XSLT files for all of the serializations we would use for publishing. Writing the XSLT also provided a better understanding of the specifics of each of the RDF serializations.
For those without an advanced programming background,as was the case with our project team, XSLT is an excellent beginner language, particularly for those with some experience using HTML or XML. The W3C maintains excellent XSLT, XML, and XML Path Language (XPATH) tutorials at their W3Schools website (http://www.w3schools.com/).Project teams should also take advantage of free web resources when troubleshooting specific errors during the conversion process. The NCSU project team found Stack Overflow (http://stackoverflow.com乃,a website where users offer solutions to each other's coding problems, and other technically oriented message boards to be invaluable resources for troubleshooting errors during the creation of the XSLT files.