Would these subobjects interfere at some stage with the support of
multi-value properties or replace them? Or will they remain an additional
feature like the SIOs?
Gu
On Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:02:32 +0100, Markus Krötzsch
<mar...@semantic-mediawiki.org> wrote:
> Following up the discussions we had at SMWCon in Berlin, we have now
> implemented a new feature for "internal objects" in SMW. This email
> explains this feature and starts the discussion on some open questions
> for it to become stable.
>
>
> == Goal ==
>
> Allow SMW annotations to refer to objects that have their own
> property-value pairs just like wiki pages, but that do not actually have
> an article in the wiki. This can be used to "group" property-value pairs
> given on one page without requiring new auxiliary pages to be created.
> It also integrates the main functionality of the Semantic Internal
> Objects (SIO) extension into SMW.
>
>
> == Feature Overview: Current Prototype Implementation ==
>
> SMW now has a new "subobject" feature. For example, you can use the
> parserfunction #subobject on some page "Example page" as follows:
>
> {{#subobject:street address
> | street name=Parks Road
> | postcode=OX1 3QD
> | city=Oxford
> | country=UK
> }}
>
> This does the following:
>
> (A) create a new subobject called "Example page#_anInternalId",
> (B) assign the property values for "street name", ..., "country" to this
> subobject,
> (C) assign the subobject "Example page#_anInternalId" as a property
> value for "street address" to "Example page".
>
> You could have achieved a similar effect as follows:
>
> (A') create a new page called "my auxiliary page",
> (B') edit this new page to contain the text:
>
> [[street name::Parks Road]]
> [[postcode::OX1 3QD]]
> [[city::Oxford]]
> [[country::UK]]
>
> (C') edit the page "Example page" to contain the text:
>
> [[street address::my auxiliary page]]
>
>
> The difference when using #subobject is that you do not create a new
> auxiliary page. Instead, a subobject of "Example page" is created by
> SMW. Also, the function #subobject does not display anything unless an
> error occurred that needs to be reported.
>
> Subobjects are named automatically by following the schema "Parent page
> name#_someInternalId". When subobjects are displayed to users, they thus
> appear like links to sections within their parent page. This can happen,
> e.g., subobjects might occur in query results (example above: {{#ask:
> [[postcode::OX1 3QD]] }}). Likewise, subobjects are also addressed by
> this name "Parent page name#_someInternalId" in all search and export
> interfaces in SMW. For example, one can view the data for one particular
> subobject in Special:Browse.
>
> In general, subobjects should work like normal pages in most SMW
> interfaces. The goal of this naming is to avoid any clashes with real
> pages and with real sections in real pages while still allowing the same
> methods to be used.
>
> The feature can be tested in the current SVN version but it is still
> unstable and might change significantly (read on).
>
>
> == Relation to Semantic Internal Objects ==
>
> The feature is very similar to the SIO extension. The difference is that
> in SIO, the main property ("street address" above) points from the
> subobject to the parent page. In the above example, "street address"
> really means "has street address" while in SIO it would be used like "is
> street address of".
>
> The other difference is that subobjects work with both SQL and RDF
> stores, are exported in RDF and are compatible with interfaces like
> Special:Browse.
>
>
> == Alternative Proposal ==
>
> Instead of having a parser function that creates a subobject and assigns
> it to a property as a value, one could also have a parser function that
> only does the first thing and that *returns* a subobject for later use.
> This would require some further changes but it might be more elegant.
>
> For example, a call like
>
> {{#subobject: street name=Parks Road | postcode=OX1 3QD| city=Oxford }}
>
> would just "create" such an object and return its name (e.g.
> "Example_page#_someId"). Then one could use this name as a value to
> other properties, e.g.:
>
> [[street address::{{#subobject: street name=Parks Road
> | postcode=OX1 3QD
> | city=Oxford
> }}]]
>
> One advantage of this is that one could arbitrarily nest subobjects,
> i.e. use subobjects as property values when declaring other subobjects
> (SMW can already do this, just the input syntax does not support it).
> Another advantage is that subobjects could (optionally) be named instead
> of using the name generated by SMW now. For example, one could have
>
> {{#subobject:department_address
> |street name=Parks Road | postcode=OX1 3QD| city=Oxford }}
>
> to create a subobject called "Example page#department_address" which
> could be used in other annotations on *any* page (this is already
> possible with subobjects now, but since their names are generated by SMW
> they might not be stable over time). In this case, it might be less
> desirable to return the name of the subobject.
>
> Overall, this alternative approach would allow subobjects to be used as
> first-class citizens of the SMW data space instead of viewing them as
> auxiliary objects for encoding compound property values.
>
>
> == Request for Comments ==
>
> Feedback is welcome. The first question is which approach to subobjects
> should eventually be used. The follow-up question is how the respective
> parser function should be called. But there might also be completely
> different comments and questions.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Markus
>
>
>
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