[Introspector-developers] Request for comment for a standard DOM based API
Status: Beta
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mdupont
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From: James M. D. <mdu...@ya...> - 2003-01-15 07:57:07
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you can see the newest feature request here, it is not fully fleshed out, but on the right track. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=668356&group_id=19878&atid=369878 Please review and comment Proposal : Create an XML DOM model of the introspector The RDF data sources used by the introspector are good for the transfer of data out of the compiler. The network of nodes stored internally is mapped onto a network of object externally. The user of this data is confused by some of the semantics of the model. Many objects like names and identifiers that are contained by others are "pointed-to" by arcs in the graph. This makes usage of the data mode complex. I proposed therefore to create a set of transformations that will create an XML DOM interface for the introspectors RDF data. This interface will allow the creation of a TREE structure out of the network of data for a given viewpoint. Once in this structure, the DOM can be translated into a different interface, or serialized out into XML and loaded into a Browser. The DOM supports many programming language bindings, many more than RDF. The DOM supports named and ordered hierarchies of collections, the RDF has limited support for collections. We will define a set of predicates that will be used to annotate existing RDF predicates of existing rdf files. The mapping of a RDF onto the DOM will occur by a set of aggregation , composition and association relationships that are layered into a hierarchy. The creation of attributes will also be approched. We will defined the predicate in a different note. The predicates will be based on UML and be based on the previous work in the field (see the end of this for a list of links) Association : ObjectA is-associated-with ObjectB arity of the association- right now we are only modelling binary associations, not n-ary ones. We then have two association_ends for an association, the A and the B end. Here is the description of the attributes for an association end. association_end { aggregation - is this a aggregation, collection or something else (this is als) ordering - is the order important qualifier (a list of attributes for finding objects in the association) cardinality - what is the minimum and maximum card of the relationship navigability - is it possible to navigate this relationship navigability-attributes (a list of attributes that are used to navigate this association class - do we create an intermediate class to handle the association? what is the implementation of the association } There are two important subclasses of an association aggregation and composition. aggregation is a form of association { a whole-part binary relationship between two classes. } composition is a form of aggregatoin { an object may only by part of one composition if the parent is destroyed, the the child is destroyed. } see also : http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-rdf-uml/ http://www-db.stanford.edu/~melnik/rdf/uml/ ===== James Michael DuPont http://introspector.sourceforge.net/ __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com |