[topicmapmail] How do you deal with (lack of) association templates ?

[Bernard Vatant]

For a paper I intend to present in Baltimore XML 2002, I would like to make a liitle
review of how TM thinkers and developers deal currently with association templates - or
rather with lack of any standard for that matter.

To set the problem, let's take an example. Topic Maps A, B, C declare in the same scope
"employment" associations

Topic Map A employment
-- "employer" : X
-- "employee" : Y

Topic Map B employment
-- "employer" : X
-- "employee" : Z

Topic Map C employment
-- "company" : X
-- "employee" : Y

Topic Map D employment
-- "company" : X
-- "CTO" : Y
-- "consultant" : Z

"employment", "employee" and "company" are defined using the same PSI respectively.

What is the result of merging of A and B ? How many associations?
Idem for A and C, then A and B and C ...

What process would you imagine or have you already figured to get rid of redundancy and
reduce the number of associations and roles in the merged maps to the minimum in such
cases?

Thanks for your brainstorming

Bernard

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Bernard Vatant
Consultant - Mondeca
www.mondeca.com
Chair - OASIS TM PubSubj Technical Committee
www.oasis-open.org/committees/tm-pubsubj/
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