[sc34wg3] What do we mean by reification?

[Steve Pepper]

At 20:47 04.03.2003 -0800, Nikita Ogievetsky wrote:
>I think that from the very beginning we new that the term reification is
>overloaded in XTM and everywhere else.
>We just had never done anything about it (and what could we? :-))
>We need to be able to be clearly distinguish between the two cases
>and clearly indicate which reification we mean.
>(one (per SAM) being a subclass of the other (per RM) )

This is what the SAM does. The superclass is termed "representation"
and the subclass is termed "reification" and it all works quite nicely.

If we replace "representation" with "reification" for the superclass,
we're going to have big trouble coming up with a suitable term for the
subclass. (If anyone doubts that we *need* a term, try counting the
number of usages of "reif*" in the SAM. I counted 62 times, including
keywords and property names.)

At any rate, the SAM and RM are inconsistent at the moment and we need
to decide what to do with the situation. Either we live with the
inconsistency (and explain why it's there), or we adopt different
terminology.

This seems to be getting to the heart of the difference between the SAM
and the RM. If "every subject is already (pre)reified" in the RM, but not
in the SAM, perhaps the apparent inconsistency becomes acceptable?

Steve

--
Steve Pepper, Chief Executive Officer <pepper@ontopia.net>
Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34/WG3  Editor, XTM (XML Topic Maps)
Ontopia AS, Waldemar Thranes gt. 98, N-0175 Oslo, Norway.
http://www.ontopia.net/ phone: +47-23233080 GSM: +47-90827246