Re: [ontolog-forum] Consensus on labeling of relationships?

[William Frank <williamf.frank@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 2:55 PM, doug foxvog <doug@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, May 21, 2013 08:16, Phil Murray wrote:

......

> OTHER QUESTIONS:

> 1. Does a relationship consist of the connecting arc only, or does it
> encompass the two objects and the connecting arc? Maybe it's not
> either/or?

To identify an arc, its end points have to be known, as well as the
type of arc.  The relationship needs to specify the end points; it
need not have all information about them.

Note that some relationships have arity greater than two, and
thus can not be modeled by a single arc between two points.

And some relationships have an arity of one.   Why are those represented with boxes and the rest of them with arcs????   (And, to go on, some have an arity of zero, but that is another matter). 
 

> 2. In abstract terms, if links are first-class objects, should they have
> unique identities and support multiple forms of metadata?

Yes.

In different terms, if 'links' are first class objects, why are they treated differenty depending on their arity?

If you treat all domain specific concepts as just that, fiirst class object, and make the differences, such as arities, later, and leave the links to represent the logical particles, you have a much simpler modeling language and an easier time of drawing everything you might want to draw, such as the features of the relations with an arity greater than 1.   You can also make statements about these relations wihtout having to commit to the types of the entities they connect, you need only identify the roles as the connected entitties.  (A perennial problem and time waster in concept modelling").   (In fact, they can then themselves have relations with other relations.


 

-- 
William Frank

413/376-8167


_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/  
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/  
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/ 
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J    (01)