Markus,
Thanks for taking this on. I talked myself out of both solutions three
times, just in the span of writing a response. This is a tough problem, I
think. So, what niggles at me is whether it is reasonable to argue for
solution 1 or solution 2 based on whether the "something" in the middle is
real or abstract?
I mean, you gave an example using an address but Yaron usually talks about
N-ary relations using a recipe analogy. An address is a real thing that
exists irregardless of where it's mentioned in the wiki and the address has
parts (which also have some sort of relatedness in the real world). I think
that in the case of the address, it would be OK to make a wiki page for that
data--12 Downing Street is relevant even if the PM moves to 14 Downing St,
because it's still a real place. It's relevant because some person or
business occupies (or "Has") that address.
Whereas the recipe example (quantity+ingredient) is more of an adverb+verb
combination and they are only relevant to each other in the specific
instance (and completely meaningless outside of the recipe context). "500g
of flour" would never deserve its own wiki page.
I think solution 1 suits the real case better but, would work for both
cases. Solution 2 really only works for the abstract case. However, since
the real case can be solved by making a wiki page but the abstract case
cannot, maybe solution 2 is the preferable option. That way,people won't go
around NOT making wiki pages about things that really ought to have pages
made about them.
-Clarence
On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 5:02 AM, 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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