[sc34wg3] Topic names and occurrences in the TMDM

[Jan Algermissen]

Murray,

On Sep 29, 2005, at 6:56 PM, M.Altheim wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Just a question that came to mind whilst reading the section
> on Topic names in section 5.4 "Topic name items" of the TMDM:
>
>    [...]
>    Essentially, a base name is a specialized kind of occurrence.
>
> To my mind, names are not a specialized kind of occurrence at
> all -- names, occurrences and roles played in associations are
> the three kinds of topic characteristics. Topic names and
> occurrences are peers in that taxonomy; names are not a subclass
> of occurrence, which would imply that a name is an occurrence of
> the Topic, not a characteristic of it. That doesn't make sense
> to me.
>
> Clarification, please...
>

Since TMDM suggested practice seems to be to express attributes of  
subjects (age, height, eye-color, department number etc.) as  
occurrences and since a name is just a special kind of attribute it  
seemms logical to say that a name is a special kind of occurrence.

Subject Indicators and Subject Address are then, BTW, also just  
occurrences.

I have allways wondered what the benefit of four constructs for  
things that are just semantic variations of a basic functinality  
could be....seems awkward to have to implement basically the same  
thing four times....

Oh well...does anybody care?

Jan


> Thanks,
>
> Murray
>
> [1] http://www.isotopicmaps.org/sam/sam-model/#sect-topic-name
> ......................................................................
> Murray Altheim                          http://www.altheim.com/murray/
> Strategic & Service Development
> The Open University Library
> Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK
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Jan Algermissen, Consultant & Programmer                         
http://jalgermissen.com
Tugboat Consulting, 'Applying Web technology to enterprise IT'   
http://www.tugboat.de