Re: [Exist-open] Relationships between Documents (and an apology)...

[Martin H. <mh...@uv...>]

Hi there,

First, you need to consider whether these links are unpredictable and 
therefore have to be explicit, or whether they could actually be derived 
from the data itself. For instance, if I have a name tag like this:

<name>Joe Bloggs<reg>Bloggs, Joe</reg></name>

and I can be sure that the reg tag (the regularized form of the name) 
has always been correctly expressed in the data, then I never need to 
link between that name and anything which contains that name; I can 
discover (for instance) all documents that were authored by that person 
simply using XQuery or XPath:

//TEI[//docAuthor//reg[. &= 'Bloggs, Joe']]

or something like that. Many links which used to have to be explicitly 
encoded can now be discovered simply through queries.

If these are arbitrary links, though (say between one paragraph in one 
document, and a note in another document), then I would say it's best to 
use a standard linking system such as XLink. If links are likely to be 
created frequently, by people that don't actually author or edit the 
documents directly, then I guess it would be best to store them in a 
separate document or subcollection dedicated to these relationships.

Cheers,
Martin


Andrzej Jan Taramina wrote:
> First, let me apologize for the raft of posts this morning.  I'm considering
> using eXist for a very high profile, standards based implementation, and am
> looking to the community to help me understand how to do some things in eXist
> that I couldn't find in the docs/wiki or by googling.  Your patience and
> suggestions are very much appreciated.  This is the last key topic I wanted to
> ask about....
> 
> What is the best way to reflect relationships between documents?
> 
> I can think of a number of approaches:
> 
>   - embedded links (probably XLinks)
>   - separate, small "relationship" documents that implement associations 
>     (basically with a type and two links, from source to target doc)
>   - Implicit relationships.  For example, using an embedded identifier that
>     can be used somehow to construct a URL/Reference to the other doc.
>   - Augment documents with a relationships element (embedded or added), probably
>     using a trigger.
> 
> How have other users addressed this requirement of document relationships in the
> past? 
> 
> I only found one post on this in the archives (from 2001), but it had no
> replies.  I have to believe that this is not a unique need on my part.
> 
> Many thanks for any/all input and suggestions.
> 
> ...Andrzej
> 
> Chaeron Corporation: Enterprise System Solutions
> http://www.chaeron.com
> 
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