[tmql-wg] TM is TMQL output

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Robert Barta
| 
| 3. You get what you ask for.
| 
| In some cases, it's the topic(s) you are interested, in others the
| assocs. Sometimes it's a mixture of both. So the standard cannot
| constrain this.

The mechanism for constructing the topic map output would have to be
so flexible that people can get what they want. Otherwise it's
useless. Exactly how we do that we don't know yet, but clearly it must
be a combination of default behaviours and ways to override them.
 
| With 'fragmentation' you mean that a query produces a 'submap' (i.e.
| a subset of topics/assocs of the original map)? If so, then
| defininitely so. But I cannot see a way around this.

I think there's two steps here: producing the TM subset (doable in
many different ways, one of which is TMQL) and creating an XTM
fragment from the subset. I don't think the last part is something
TMQL should do, since it's broader than TMQL, but I do think it's
something TMQL should be able to use.

This brings up something new: do we need a concept of a fragment
syntax for topic maps, like what SGML/XML has? I'm not sure exactly
where we'd put it in the standards landscape, but it does sound like
something that would be useful. Comments on this? Should we mention it
in the requirements document?
 
| OTOH if we allow arbitrary content to be generated in one go (and I
| think it is all about reducing the interaction with the application
| to get the performance), then the output can be _completely_
| decoupled from the map we are querying.

Agreed.

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