Using XML technologies for modeling
and searching legislative acts.
A case study: managing brazilian acts.
V Legislative XML Workshop
14-16 June 2006 - San Domenico di Fiesole (Florence - Italy)
Andrea Marchetti, Isabela Martins Garcia Leite,
Maurizio Tesconi, Salvatore Minutoli
Overview
• A schema for Brazilian legislative acts
– from a thesis of Isabela Martins Garcia Leite
• Presentations of XML technologies for
modelling, trasforming and searching
– with a demo
I regret but
• Thinking in italian
• Speaking in english
• Reading in portuguese
Chaos
Brazilian schema
• Thesis realized in 2002/2003
– Is it necessary some updating?
• Drafting Rules from 3 sources
– Lei Complementar 95/1998
– Decreto n. 4.176/2002
– Manual de redação da Presidência da República
• Influence of NIR experience
Lei Complementar 95/1998
• Main source for drafting rules
• It defines the rules of:
– authoring (formal, formatting, functional)
– alteration
– consolidation
• For the following kind of acts
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Emenda à Constituição,
Lei Complementar,
Lei Ordinária,
Decreto Legislativo,
Lei Delegada
Medida Provisória
Decreto
os atos de regulamentação expedidos pelos orgãos do Executivo
Federal
Formal structure of Brazilian Law
Preliminar
Normativa
Final
The “Preliminar” Part
epigrafe
ementa
preambulo
objectoAmbitoDeAplicacao
The “normativa” part
artigo
numero
caput
paragrafoUnico
numero
caput
artigo
The “normativa” part
• Organization of “artigo” elements
Brazilian schema
Italian schema
The “final” part
vigencia
lugar, data,
anoDaIndipendencia,
anoDaRepubblica
fecho
assinatura
Schema
Schema
• A light schema (only 40 elements)
• Adoption of the drafting rules strictly
• We will study the markup for managing
law alteration
Formatting rules
lei Complementar 95/1998
• parte, livro, titulo, capitulo uppercase name + roman number
(parti espresse in numerale ordinale per esteso ???).
• seçao, subseçao lowercase bold name + roman numbers
Formatting Rules
lei Complementar 95/1998
• artigo abbreviation “Art.”, + ordinal
number until 9th and cardinal number from
10th
Formatting Rules
lei Complementar 95/1998
• paragrafo graphic symbol “§”, + ordinal number untill 9 and cardinal
number from 9. When there is only one paragraph it is used the
expression “paragrafo unico”
Formatting Rules
lei Complementar 95/1998
• Inciso roman numbers.
• Alinea small letter .
• Iten arabic number
Functional rules
lei Complementar 95/1998
• Clearness
– popular words/expressions, short sentences, use the same
tense especially present and future tense, avoiding stylistic
excesses
• Preciseness
– use the same words to express keywords, avoid synonims and
ambigous words, avoid regional expressions, no acronyms, …
• Logical Order
– only sentences regarding the object of the law
• Alteration
– to insert a new artigo you must repeat the number plus a capital
letter
– ex Art. 2°-A.
II Part
• Demo of XML Tools and Technologies
XQuery
• Mix of SQL + XPATH + Text retrivial functions
• XQuery allows to use functions such as near,
match into the range of XML elements selected
with xpath espressions.
• FLOWR expression
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FOR $act in //norma
LET $epigrafe:=$act//epigrafe
ORDER BY $epigrafe//numero
WHERE $epigrafe//numero > ‘10.000’
RETURN $act
XML Native Database
• XML for legislative acts. And Now?
• Looking for Native XML databases
http://www.rpbourret.com/xml/ProdsNative.htm
• eXist
eXist
• eXist exist.sourceforge.net/
– open source
– XQuery 1.0 support
• W3C Candidate Recommendation 8 June 2006
• http://www.w3.org/XML/Query/
• demo of eXist/XQuery capabilities