Re: [xdi] Splitting $is into $is and $ref

On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 1:19 PM, Markus Sabadello <markus.sabadello@xdi.org> wrote:

I think I understand, so an XDI server would automatically follow $ref arcs the way it is following $is arcs now?

Yes - exactly the same.

What would an XDI server do when it encounters a $is arc?

Nothing. $is as a standalone arc that asserts pure logical, non-canonical equivalence for semantic purposes. We have always needed it - in fact Kari came up with a use case last spring that required it within one local graph (identifying the same device in the context of different collections of measurements it was taking). But since at that time we had defined $is to be directional and canonical, we could not use $is to solve that use case. Now $is would work perfectly for it.

Wouldn't there be many cases where you'd need both a $is arc and a $ref arc, therefore making the graphs bigger than they are today?

No. $ref still carries the equivalence semantics of what we have been using $is for. So $ref would replace 100% of the places were we are using $is today.

Would there still be a distinction between public/standard and private/compact equivalence links, e.g. $ref and $ref! ?

Yes. Exactly the same as we had it with $is and $is!.

What would the "I am" statements look like?

Currently they look like this:

(=!91F2.8153.F600.AE24)/$is/()
()/$is$is/(=!91F2.8153.F600.AE24)

The new ones would be:

(=!91F2.8153.F600.AE24)/$ref/()

()/$is$ref/(=!91F2.8153.F600.AE24)

Note how the latter statement reads much more intuitively that the former "$is$is" that we all didn't like.

Please do post any other thoughts on this. I'll put this on the agenda for Friday's call - I'm eager to put this question to bed so we can update our example graphs and any implementation code bases.

I also had a huge light bulb idea while working on how to model the declarative policy statements that Phil needs for link contracts on event channels. I'll post that later today.

=Drummond

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 3:50 AM, Drummond Reed <drummond.reed@xdi.org> wrote:

Although it's been a very busy week, in my background "cook time" I've been thinking about the suggestion on last Friday's TC call that we split the current proposal for $is predicate behavior (https://wiki.oasis-open.org/xdi/EquivalenceLinks) into two verbs.

The strawman I began playing with this weekend was to break it into:
$is = logical equivalence = symmetric, transitive, reflexive
$ref = canonical directional equivalence = asymmetric, intransitive, irreflexive

In thinking it through, I realized that this works very cleanly in three ways:
Every standalone use of $is as a predicate that we currently have (at least in the XDI graph model document) would become $ref

Everyplace where $is is used as the PREFIX for another predicate (e.g., $is$do) would NOT change, i.e., IMHO $is would still work well for this inversion function.
This means that the awkward $is$is predicate (needed to identify the equivalence links for root nodes, for example) would now become $is$ref, which reads much better and is certainly more intuitive.

So, at this point I'm very much liking this idea, and I'm ready to write it up as a formal change to the https://wiki.oasis-open.org/xdi/EquivalenceLinks proposal, but first I wanted to post it here on the mailing list for discussion. (I'm also copying this to https://wiki.oasis-open.org/xdi/EquivalenceLinks/Discussion).

=Drummond

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