Re: TMQL - Proposal: Removal of reifier axis

Lars,

Question:

Are you assuming an association has a reifier, hence a name 
characteristic and you want to skip asking for the reifier?

That is no change in the modeling of association, just a short-cut in 
the query?

Or something more fundamental?

Hope you are having a great weekend!

Patrick

On 4/30/2011 4:08 AM, Lars Heuer wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I don't know how TMQL would/should look alike, but I wonder if the
> reifier axis could be made implicit (probably we have to keep an
> explicit reifier axis though).
>
> If we take the Topic Maps slogan "everything is a subject/topic"
> seriously, why shouldn't it be possible to ask an association
> *directly* for its names without the "give me the reifier of the
> association and then all names" step (syntax-wise)?
>
> Example:
>
>     TMQL 2008
>
>     //tmdm:association>>  reifier>>  characteristics tmdm:topic-name
>
> vs.
>
>     //tmdm:association>>  characteristics tmdm:topic-name
>
> or (if you don't like the>>  syntax):
>
>     //tmdm:association/*[. isa tmdm:topic-name]
>
>
> would return all names of all topics which reify an association.
>
> Is the "reifier" step really useful? If the user wants to query all
> names of an association, the user already assumes that it is reified.
>
> The proposal is not limited to associations but all reifiable Topic
> Maps constructs.
>
> In the other direction (topic ->  reified) it would be possible to ask
> a topic for its datatype iff the topic reifies an occurrence/variant
> or for its roles iff the topic reifies an association.
>
>
> Best regards,
> Lars

-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick-Q/[email protected]
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)

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