[topicmapmail] Stupid newbie question: specification of association roles

[Lars Heuer]

Hi Andrew,

Welcome to Topic Maps :)

[...]
> What I'm wondering is if there is, or if not, why there isn't a way to
> specify the required roles of an association.  If you define the

Well, the Topic Maps community develops currently a standard for such
purposes. With [TMCL] you can define constraints.
There are a few, non-standard, solutions: [OSL], [Toma] and [AsTMa!],
but they are proprietary island solutions, which means, that you
cannot use your Toma constraints in AsTMa! etc.

> association with different roles?  It looks like this is more-or-less
> the intention of the association skeleton in AsTMa, beyond just allowing

The main purpose of the AsTMa= templates is to let the user type less,
but you're right, this solution is also useful to define a minimal
constraint "Don't forget to define this and that role".

[TMCL] <http://www.isotopicmaps.org/tmcl/>
[OSL]  <http://www.ontopia.net/omnigator/docs/schema/tutorial.html>
[Toma] <http://www.spaceapplications.com/toma/Toma.html>
[AsTMa!]
<http://astma.it.bond.edu.au/astma!-tutorial.dbk?style=printable>
<http://astma.it.bond.edu.au/astma!-spec.dbk?style=printable>


Best regards,
Lars
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