Re: [Tmapi-discuss] intro

[Lars H. <he...@se...>]

Hi Borislav,


> Ok, so I assume that the API will eventually change. For now, I'll just
> return a set with a single element in it. Related to that, I have the
> following question: since reifier topics must always be bound to the entity
> that they reify (say an occurence, or an association role), than when that
> entity is removed, it must remove the reifier topic as well?

No, you shouldn't. The topic may exists even without reifying
something. You may remove the topic if it exists just for reifying
something, but IMO this should be done at the application level and
not in TMAPI.

> Hence an implementation of say Occurrence.remove should remove the
> occurrence reifier topic if ist exists, no?

IMO it should not be removed (i.e. the Association.remove() method
does not delete the role playing topics, too).

> Another question that came up so far: every TopicMapObject has a
> 'getTopicMap' method. This means that no topic, no association, no topic
> name etc. can belong to more than one topic map in the underlying system. Is
> that so?

Right.

> This is a bit counterintuitive since one may want different views
> (== topic maps) to coexist in the same topic space (==topics database),
> without necessarily having to merge them as soon as they have some entity in
> common.

Well, you can merge topics on the fly if you need views on topic maps.
Or you create a topic map that provides a view on topic maps.

TMAPI was not designed for such purposes. The question is, if someone
wants to make such thinks within an API or if a Topic Maps query
language is more appropriate:

         select $p from TM-A, TM-B where $p isa person

Best regards,
Lars
-- 
http://www.semagia.com