[topicmapmail] Expressive capabilities of Topic Maps

[jalgermissen@topicmapping.com]

Hi,

I have a question regarding the expressive capability of topic maps. I
am very curious what others think about or how they solved something
similar to the follwoing.

Suppose a company indends to migrate the following relational data to
topic maps:


CREATE TABLE PERSON (
    ID        CHAR(10),
    SURNAME   CHAR(60),
    FIRSTNAME CHAR(60),
    BIRTHDATE DATE,
    CITY      CHAR(30),
    ZIPCODE   CHAR(6),
    STREET    CHAR(40),
    COUNTRY   CHAR(3),
    PRIMARY KEY(ID),
    UNIQUE (SURNAME,FIRSTNAME)
);

INSERT INTO PERSON VALUES
('6657A54','Hansen','Hans','02-02-1970','Hamburg','22607','Im Gehoelz
33','FRG');


How would the entity Hans Hansen be represented in a topic map (propably
in XTM syntax),
assuming that all the attributes are to remain attributes (meaning that
they are not be
regarded as subjects in their own right and thus not to be represented
as topics). How
would we 'solve' the following issues:

- How to represent the attributes (e.g. as occurrences/resourceData in
XTM ??)
- How to preserve the expressive capability of the original data, such
as the data types
  of the various properties and the uniqueness constraints
- how to document/communicate the decisions so that others can
understand them (like the
  way we can all understand the SQL statements)


Thoughts?

Jan


-- 
Jan Algermissen                <algermissen@acm.org>
Consultant & Programmer

http://www.topicmapping.com
http://www.gooseworks.org