[sc34wg3] Questions on N0396: (2) one or more association memberships

[Steve Pepper]

At 17:39 18.04.2003 +0200, Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
>This is a carry-over from HyTM and XTM, both of which allow unary
>associations. The rationale, I've been told, was that unary
>associations are essentially assertions about a single subject, such
>as:
>
>   is-inquisitive(jan : person)
>
>SAM has to have this because HyTM and XTM have it.
>
>| I suggest to constrain the cardinality of the [roles] property of an
>| association item to be two or more.
>
>No can do, since that would break backwards compatibility.
>
>I'm pretty sure I've seen people use this in actual topic maps, though
>I forget where.

One version of the opera topic map had this:

    unfinished( turandot : opera )

i.e. an association of type 'unfinished' with one role player,
'turandot'.

Was this the example you were thinking of?

Steve

--
Steve Pepper, Ontopian
http://www.ontopia.net
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