Re: [Refdb-devel] xnote links

[Markus H. <mar...@mh...>]

Hi Damien,

probably I'm a bit dense here, but I think that links via the t_xnote
table are bidirectional by nature. It is just a matter of the proper
query. We've got the same issue with the t_refdb, t_author, and
t_xauthor tables. I can start with a name and find all
references in t_refdb that use that name as an author. I can also
start with a reference ID and retrieve all authors of this
reference. Speaking in terms of extended notes, "links to" and "is
linked from" should be pretty much the same story. Or am I missing
something here?

regards,
Markus

Damien Jade Duff writes:
 > I think I know what you mean - you'd allow presumably a NOTE string in 
 > the xnote_type field of the t_xnote table. Though I think that would 
 > only allow for unidirectional links unless you were happy to let your 
 > backend try to keep two links updated (I believe this is sort of frowned 
 > upon in the relational DB world) or to search two indices, note_id and 
 > xref_id for a particular note_id (maybe okay but seems clumsy).
 > 
 > I could handle non-directional links outside of RefDB by automatically 
 > generating dummy references to group notes with but it's kind of messy, 
 > particularly as there's no real reason to group notes in groups bigger 
 > than 2 (since you could then group notes by linking them all to another, 
 > group note, anyway).
 > 
 > On the other hand, while non-directional links would be nice, 
 > unidirectional links would be just fine as far as I'm concerned. It 
 > would be up to the DB user to specify if he/she wanted a link going both 
 > ways.
 > 
 > As far as a GUI tree view on the data is concerned, well it may recurse 
 > sometimes, but that's just a consequence of choosing a tree to view a 
 > potentially cyclic directed (or undirected) graph.
 > 
 > Feel free to talk me out of it!
 > 
 > Peace
 > Damien
 > 
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-- 
Markus Hoenicka
mar...@ca...
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