[sc34wg3] TMCL 6.7 Overlap Declaration

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Patrick Durusau
>
> Particularly given the example of person as a topic type overlapping
> employee.
>
> Or,
>
> person overlapping author, editor, artist, illustrator, umpire,  
> referee,
> chair, secretary, policeman, firefighter, driver, jockey, batter,
> pitcher, catcher, player, singer, musician, actor, actress, director,
> producer, composer, etc.

In my humble opinion, only one of these is a topic type (person).

The others are sometimes, in special cases, used as topic types, but  
it's pretty rare. The Italian Opera topic map is one example. The  
Bergen Kommune topic map is another. I'm not sure I know of any more.  
So it really is quite rare.

> Why not make the default that topic types overlap and provide the  
> means
> to declare that particular types *are* disjoint?
>
> Making the general rule the most common case seems like a better  
> option
> to me.

In our experience the common case is that topic types don't overlap.  
The most promiscuously overlapping topic map that I know of is the  
Italian Opera one, and even there, if you did a list of all (topic  
type 1, topic type 2) pairs in the ontology you'd find that the  
majority of them do in fact not overlap.

--Lars M.
http://www.garshol.priv.no/tmphoto/
http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/