[sc34wg3] SAM-issue term-scope-def

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Bernard Vatant
|
|
| Graham, I'm glad we share positions on that. The way you extend the
| debate reminds me of the very short exchange we had a month ago on
| topicmapmail about "source" of associations. What I proposed first
| at the time, which was very silly indeed, was adding a "source"
| attribute to associations, but in fact it was going no more no less
| along the same lines than scope, "source" being just a subtype of
| "scope".  What you and others said rightly at the time is that the
| proper way to deal with that is to attach "source" to the reified
| association, either as an occurrence, or by "assertion-source"
| association. The same argument holds for scope, so we come to the
| same conclusion indeed ...

I agree. These things are related, and in fact the RDF people are
lumping these two things together under the term "provenance". (I don't
know if that term is universally accepted in the RDF community.) 
 
* Graham Moore
|
| I would like us to try and get some consensus on this idea and put
| something into the spec to reflect this.
 
* Bernard Vatant
|
| I would applaud to that - 

So the idea proposed is that we add a note that scope is underpowered
in the specification we are producing now, but otherwise leave it
as-is? Presumably this is being done so that we can later come back
with something more powerful?

| the only thing I can do, until France come back to sc34 ...  still a
| long way to go :((
 
Bernard, that's not true. Any OASIS or ISUG member can attend SC34
meetings, since both organizations have full liaison status with SC34.
In fact, this is how Steve Newcomb attends meetings. The fact that
this doesn't give you a vote is immaterial, since nearly all decisions
are in any case taken by developing consensus through debate.

In other words, nothing is formally holding you back...

| It figures we would keep scope there just for backward
| compatibility, but provide and recommend more effective and semantic
| ways to deal with what scope wants to express, through association
| reification process. If we provide something robust and effective, I
| suppose old-fashioned non-specified scope would die out slowly by
| itself, the same way I don't think many people use association
| members with no role specification, although they are allowed to do
| so by the standard.

I am not necessarily opposed to this, but I think we should be careful
to take things one step at a time. It seems to me that it should be
possible to come up with a more powerful scope construct later that
can support all the things we are currently doing with scope. If that
is the case I think we should move forward now with what we have, and
those who are interested can develop scope++ proposals in paralell.

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
ISO SC34/WG3, OASIS GeoLang TC        <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >