[topicmapmail] Topicmaps and LINQ ??

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Thompson, Miles
>
> I wonder if anyone out there in TopicMap world has been thinking about
> whether TopicMaps is a fit (or not!) for the LINQ
> <http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa904594> style syntax
> that seems to be the latest trendy thing in programming.

There is some Topic Maps work dealing with the OO/TM impedance  
mismatch problem.

In the TMRA 2006 proceedings you'll find a paper by the  
NetworkedPlanet guys on how they've essentially adapted the OR  
mapping approach (used to map RDBMS models to OO models) to Topic  
Maps. In other words, for your foo:person topics you get Person  
objects. Definitely worth a read.

In the TMRA 2005 proceedings there's a paper by Jakub Strychowski  
which, among other things, covers Topic Maps Scripting Language  
(TMSL). This may sound very grand, but is basically the same as LINQ  
and JavaFX, but instead of embedding SQL in C#/Java, he embeds tolog  
in Java. Also worth a read.

I think probably both of these approaches have their place, but the  
mapping approach is definitely the cleanest one, and the embedding  
approach is the one that's the more likely to lead you into messy,  
unmaintainable code. Also, the embedding approach means you're no  
longer programming in a standard language (to which standard tools  
apply), which makes things more tricky.

--Lars M.