[tmql-wg] Toma - Use Cases Solution

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Rani Pinchuk
| 
| A document that describes the Toma use cases solutions is placed in 
| http://www.spaceapplications.com/toma/UC.html.

Whooo! Now we're getting somewhere. :-)
 
| I still plan to write it in LTM files so Lars can add it to the
| document http://www.isotopicmaps.org/tmql/uc-solutions.html.

Actually, there's no need, because it's already there. :)

Overall, I think these solutions look very nice. I'm not sure your
solution to 5.2.2.3 is right (I think you have the same problem as
tolog here), and I think I've mislead you with regard to "the
unconstrained scope", which means "the empty scope", and not a
particular scope. Other than this looks very good, and actually makes
Toma look like a candidate to be taken seriously.
 
| In the context of the very long result-set thread - In order to
| solve the XML use cases, I defined a new way for Toma to create
| XML. This is according to the Skin pattern, and I should still
| develop the idea.  However, I wonder if those examples makes this
| issue clearer (so how can we separate queries from the XML).

Yes, I think it does. I need more time to look at this more carefully,
but this does look good.
 
| I found that the use cases are excellent - they really challenged
| the languages. However I think they don't cover a very important
| domain which is "introspective queries" (as it is called in the
| 'tolog for TMQL' presentation). 

That's actually in section 6, but I don't feel those queries have been
specified in enough detail yet. I've suggested to Robert that we
tighten them up, but haven't heard back yet (I guess he's busy with
something).

| You can find many examples of those in the Toma description
| document.  I think that TMQL must include those kind of queries as
| it is used when implementing topic map browsers.

I agree. There's a wide usage area for such queries.
 
| Beside that, in my opinion the topic map that is used for the use
| cases is not the perfect one for such objective. I think that we
| should use a topic map that is about a domain we all know about, and
| yet is not too small and simple.

I don't know. Personally I don't think the topic map used matters at
all so long as it lets us do all the queries we need to. This is about
the queries much more than the query results, I'd say. :)
 
| Maybe it is better also that the topic map is created in XTM which
| is the standard now (although I prefer for example AsTMa= to
| describe topic maps manually). 

We can provide it in XTM, and I think that's all that's needed. I
don't think how it was created is very important, really.

| Other point that I think that Steve Pepper already mentioned is that
| the topic map should contain all the possible XTM tags.

That *is* a point, though I'm not sure there's much we've left out.
Anything in particular that you are missing?


Anyway, thanks a lot for writing up the solutions. This means another
step forward. :-)

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