Re: TMQL: Direct (super|sub)types?

On Sat, Mar 05, 2011 at 12:20:11AM +0100, Benjamin Bock wrote:

> > I think there will be a need to distinguish between direct and all instances of a topic type. I can hardly imagine a use case case for indirect but who knows. I think the TMQL standard is the right place to establish a clear terminology for this distinction since everybody tackles this issue a little bit different. Some call it "direct" or "deep" or whatever.
> 
> Another name would be "transitive" (even though the transitivity comes
> from the supertype/subtype, not from the type/instance itself. When
> you do topic-maps-object-mapping (as in object-relational), you'll see
> a lot of cases where you want the transitivity.
> No matter how it is called.
> 
> The "direct" is due to the fact that the transitive axes should (IMHO)
> be the default.

I strongly would agree with that. The *canonical* use case is:

  One has an TM-app which is using a background ontology. It works.
  Customer refines the ontology and introduces intermediate types on a
  Fri night.

 - subclass transitivity: no change, you sleep through the weekend
 - no transitivity: shit hits the fan, wife angry, programmer pissed

\rho