Re: [xtm-wg] Conceptual Model

[Lars Marius Garshol <larsga@garshol.priv.no>]

* Daniel Rivers-Moore
| 
| [...] proposed that the ISO group take our Conceptual Model and
| either adopt it unchanged, or amend it to the minimum degree
| necessary, and adopt it as a Technical Report as being the
| conceptual model for ISO Topic Maps.

I don't think this is a good idea. We don't need a conceptual model
half as much as we need an object model. TMQL, as well as all topic
map engine implementors, really need an object model specification.
So why should time and effort be spent on this?

If a formal model for ISO 13250 is wanted, why not make that the
object model?

| What will be needed is something analagous to what we must do in
| TopicMaps.org also - namely, a formal mapping from the conceptual
| model to the syntax.

I think this will be prove to be of little value, since the conceptual
model is too, well, conceptual, to provide a sufficiently concrete
basis for such a mapping.

What is needed is an object model which we can provide a formal
mapping to from the syntax.

As it is there are a million things that are left undefined with
respect to how XTM 1.0 is to be interpreted (though the number is down
from a zillion, which it was before annex F was added) and if we
create this mapping we will create yet another way-too-loose spec.

| If we find we can successfully map the current conceptual model
| *both* to the XTM syntax, *and* to the ISO syntax, we will have a
| powerful unification of the two syntaxes.

This would be true if you did it on top of an object model. To do it
on top of a conceptual model would in my view have much less value
because of the loss in formality.

| We would then have to validate Nikita's ISO-to-XTM conversion XSLT
| stylesheet against the Conceptual Model to syntax mappings, to make
| sure the same structures get mapped to the same structures when
| using the stylesheet as when doing the transforms via the conceptual
| model.

That stylesheet does not do merging or duplicate suppression so there
is no way it could conform to a proper syntax->model mapping.

This is not meant as a criticism of Nikita, who I think never intended
that the stylesheet would do this.

--Lars M.


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