Re: topic IDs in XTM

[Eugene Eric Kim <eekim@eekim.com>]

On Fri, 17 Aug 2001, Jack Park wrote:    (01)

> Actually, you're not misinterpreting the spec.  Nexist does, indeed, take a
> shortcut as it also does with class-subclass relations.  The actually cure
> for this is to optimize the db schema in Nexist to use the <baseNameString>
> instead of id.  That can be done at any time.  Remember, Nexist is an
> engineering prototype, with lots of shortcuts and just plain crummy code.    (02)

I'm no stranger to crummy code. :-)  This all is actually very useful;
it's giving me a good excuse and test case to understand Topic Maps.    (03)

More questions:    (04)

1. You allude to Nexist taking a shortcut with class-subclass relations.
Could you show some sample XTM that Nexist uses for an association between
two topics?  I find the fact that XTM associations are not directional a
little disconcerting, though obviously not impossible to deal with.    (05)

2. Playing around with Nexist, I noticed that it defines occurrences for
every topic.  What are the URIs pointing to?  Are they entries in the
database that contain metadata associated with an IBIS node (i.e. details,
author, timestamp, etc.)?  And, if Nexist were to import a topic map that
did not define occurrences for its topics, would it be unhappy?    (06)

-Eugene    (07)

-- 
+=== Eugene Eric Kim ===== eekim@eekim.com ===== http://www.eekim.com/ ===+
|       "Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they        |
+=====  can have an excuse to drink alcohol."  --Steve Martin  ===========+    (08)