[tmql-wg] Proposed changes to existing requirements

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Marc de Graauw
| 
| It looks to me like you want a TM Query Language and a TM
| Transformation Language all in one package...

I do, but that's just me personally, and it doesn't really have much
to do with the issue of the data model for result sets. In fact, that
requirement is on my list of proposed requirements as a separate
requirement. 

| Looking at SQL, the result of a query has the logical structure of a
| table, which is very handy (for instance if you want to store the
| results physically as a table). It seems to me Topic Maps would
| benefit using the same approach, i.e. the result of a TMQL query is
| a topic map again, and nothing else. 

I'm not disputing that. I see a number of benefits to being able to
interpret TMQL result sets as topic maps. What I am saying is that I
think there is great value to having a simpler interpretation of them
as well, and that it's possible for us to have *both*.

| Then one can have a separate technology for transforming topic maps
| to other formats, i.e. (lists of) strings or numbers. Conceivably
| this other technology could be part of the TMQL standard, but I
| wouldn't call such transformations TMQL queries or TMQL result sets.

Why not?

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >