[topicmapmail] Are Facets Really Simple After All?

[Carlo Moneti]

Kal,

Yes, I guess it does. Cool. I haven't checked out TM4Web, yet. Is it useful 
for a non java programmer?

Cheers,
Carlo Moneti


On 2003.11.30 17:22 Kal Ahmed wrote:
|Carlo,
|
|Take a look at [1]. I think it does everything you propose. Plus the
|PSIs are directly supported by TMBrowse (part of the TM4Web/Velocity
|application).
|
|Cheers,
|
|Kal
|
|[1]
|http://www.topicmapcentral.com/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=FacetedClassificationPattern
|
|On Sun, 2003-11-30 at 20:06, Carlo Moneti wrote:
|> On 2003.11.30 11:25 Thomas B. Passin wrote:
|>
|> > If this is a reasonable way to look at facets, then I do not see why
|> > using facets would be different in any essential way from classifying
|> > using a single hierarchy.  A given topic could be related to one of the
|
|> > faceted terms, say "location", by an association called, perhaps,
|> > "hasFacet".  You would find out which particular facet tree that
|> > "location" is in by walking up to the root of its tree to arrive at
|> > "Geography", whose type would be "Facet".  Of course, a real
|> > implementation would use some kind of shortcut to avoid actually
|walking
|> > the tree each time.
|> >
|> > Is there something I am missing here, or is it really this simple?
|>
|> I have come to the same conclusion as Thomas. Just last night I resolved
|> the following topic and association types:
|>
|> topic type to define a facet (#facet-root)
|> topic type to define a facet category (#facet-category)
|> association type for parent/child relation of facet-categories
|> (#facet-parent-child)
|> association type for topic as member of a facet-category (#facet-member)
|>
|> This goes a long way in addressing my concern (perhaps needless) about
|> polluting topic info with facet info, which seems to me like application
|> infrastructure detail rather than true topic info. True topics won't be
|> polluted in their occurrence data (as Murray also worried); and facet
|> hierarchies, being differentiated from others, can be processed
|distinctly
|> (turned on or off, as Murray pointed out). Also, many facet hierarchies
|may
|> be generic enough to have a double use as non facet-related hierarchies.
|>
|> This approach is convenient in that it addressess easily and intuitively
|(I
|> think) the mapping of facet info from XTM to a relational database that
|> some application will query to generate a faceted navigation experience.
|> Now, perhaps this isn't ambitious enough. Perhaps there is in theory a
|way
|> to inform a topic map and topic map engine of an equivalent of the
|> aforementioned application logic and db queries, so that the topic map
|> engine can generate a faceted navigation experience. This, however, is
|> beyond my knowledge. Is anyone working on this, or theorizing such
|> potential?
|>
|> Cheers,
|> Carlo Moneti
|> _______________________________________________
|> topicmapmail mailing list
|> topicmapmail@infoloom.com
|> http://www.infoloom.com/mailman/listinfo/topicmapmail
|--
|Kal Ahmed <kal@techquila.com>
|techquila
|
|