[sc34wg3] association source

[Bernard Vatant]

To put on the table for XTM 2.0 maybe ...

I had this remark last week when working with an industrial customer on a TM model.

"I do not want associations in the TM that are not validated by some document"

In an industrial context, that makes sense. The TM information expressed by (or asserted
in) associations is essentially extracted from documents (by humans or automatic tools).
And if it is not, it has to be validated by some authentified source.

That led me to that kind of idea so simple that you wonder why nobody did express it
before :))

1. Every association is an assertion.
2. A valid assertion should mention its source (document, author, authority ...)
3. Therefore an association should (be able to) mention its source.

This is quite different from scope, although one should be tempted to include the source
in a <scope> element. It is possible to attach the source as either a specific occurrence
type to the reified association, or to create a specific role in the association, or to
link the reified association to a topic representing the source by a specific
(meta)association. Too many ways in fact, when thinking about interoperability. The notion
of source being very specific, and very important, it would be good to have a standard way
to express it, cast in the specification stone itself.

It would be very useful and backward-compatible to include an optional <source> element
under <association>
The child elements of <source> being the same ones as those of <subjectIdentity>

<topicRef> to be used if the source is represented by a topic
<resourceRef> to be used if the source is a document
<subjectIndicatorRef> to be used if the source is a Published Subject

Comments welcome ...

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Bernard Vatant
Consultant - Mondeca
www.mondeca.com
Chair - OASIS TM PubSubj Technical Committee
www.oasis-open.org/committees/tm-pubsubj/
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