Query type PSI? WAS: Re: [topicmapmail] Expressive capabilities of Topic Maps

[Peter P. Jones]

On 23 Jul 2003 at 13:47, Lars Marius Garshol wrote:

> 
> * Peter P. Jones
> |
> | Maybe a PSI for 'SQL database query' would be a good idea?
> 
[...]
> 
> The PSI committee is not creating individual PSIs, just guidelines for
> how to create them. So anyone wanting that PSI will have to create it
> themselves.
Ah. It's just that I wondered whether a standard PSI for the above 
might enable a standard representation of RDB data in TMs.
So, e.g., with Jan's Person table, I might create a topic of type 
Person (P1) and topics for all the column names, then add an 
occurrence of type 'SQL database query' to P1, and similarly 
occurrences for each of the column names with data inserted into 
resourceData (in XTM - I'm deliberately assuming that's 
unproblematic).

For table sets with a relation between them represent that as an 
association between the topics representing the relevant tuples.

Then perhaps represent a join as an entirely new association between 
relevant tuple-representing-topics (i.e. a new recordset), and reify 
that association and give it a 'SQL database query' occurrence.

Is there a standard method for representing the column names on DBs 
beyond the internal addressing of the DB?
E.g. in mySQL you can address a column within the DB with 
db_name.tbl_name.col_name	
But can you identify that from without with something like
db_name.tbl_name.col_name:db.myserver.com:3077
as a global address for the column (assuming the appropriate 
connection protocol is a given)?

If so then column names and tuples could be matched whether in TM 
'join' associations or not, I suspect.

Just some thoughts.

-- 
Peter