[topicmapmail] Temporality in Topic Maps

[Graham Moore]

Hi, 

I've also been working with this issue and one technique I find quite useful
is to adopt an event centric approach. A time notion implies an event,
regardless of how long or short that event may be. Using a common topic type
'event' and subclassing this where required it is possible to join multiple
aspects of the event, location, participants, objects etc as associated
topics and to define the start /end aspects as occurrences of the event
topic itself. 

Starting from your example:

topic "some person"
topic "some organisation"
topic "some period"
assoc X
   type membership-period
   member "some person" role:person
   member "some organisation" role:organisation
   member "some time period" role:time-period

I would also consider doing the following:

topic "some person"
topic "some organisation"
topic "some event" : "Person Employment Event"
	- occurrence "start date/time"
	- occurrence "end date/time"

Assoc X "event has participant some person"
Assoc Y "event involves organisation some organisation"

An extension this would be to define eras/ epochs/ named start end time
topics and relate them to the event in question.

topic "some person"
topic "some organisation"
topic "some event"
Topic "some era"
	- occurrence "start date/time"
	- occurrence "end date/time"

Assoc X "event has participant some person"
Assoc Y "event involves organisation some organisation"
Assoc Z "event occurs in era some era"

Typically, the event type is the similar to the association type you had in
your example.

Hope this is of help.

Cheers, 

Graham

--
Graham Moore, Founder, NetworkedPlanet
Editor XTM 1.0, ISO13250 (TopicMaps) -1,-2, TMCL
e: graham.moore at networkedplanet.com
w: www.networkedplanet.com
m: +47 45271713
p: +44 (0)1865 811131
 
-----Original Message-----
From: topicmapmail-bounces at infoloom.com
[mailto:topicmapmail-bounces at infoloom.com] On Behalf Of Alexander Johannesen
Sent: 04 June 2006 11:08
To: topicmapmail at infoloom.com
Subject: [topicmapmail] Temporality in Topic Maps

Hi all,

I've been struggeling lately with the concept of temporality in KM systems
and was wondering what people here normally do when they face these issues,
such as relationships, topics and reifications over time. Would you do one
association with a role for time, or occurrences of the various topics, etc?

topic 1990-1993
topic 1993-1995
topic 1995-1999
topic 1999-2006

assoc X
   type membership
   member "some person" role:human
   member "some organisation" role:organisation
   member 1990-1993 role:time-period
   member 1999-2006 role:time-period

This ends up hopelessly complex when you've got huge numbers. The other way
;

topic "some person"
   occurrence "membership-at-some-organisation" value="1990-1993"
   occurrence "membership-at-some-organisation" value="1999-2006"

Again, quite messy. Let's move on to ;

topic "some person"
topic "some organisation"
topic "some period"
assoc X
   type membership-period
   member "some person" role:person
   member "some organisation" role:organisation
   member "some time period" role:time-period

I assume most would lean towards this latter, but this also presents
problems with scalability and when "some organisation" changes over time,
especially where there's overlap in "some period".

How does people handle these things?


Alex
--
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
                                                         - Frank Herbert __
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