Duples vs. Triples
From RCC 2007
Convenors: LewisHoffman, John Abbe
Other participants: JohnSechrest, David Turnbull, BrianKerr, Francisco Gadea, Axil Comras, Karl Anderson
We often want to create complex relationships out of items. Does it matter whether the basic statement in doing this is duples or triples? In either case, what does it look like?
How do you describe complex relationships between many things?
One option is RDF - Resource Description Framework - which puts everything into triples:
Subject - Verb - Object
- http://www.w3.org/RDF/
- http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/
- http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/01/24/rdf.html
XDI = XRI + RDF
Normalized Database
- http://www.xdi.org/xri-and-xdi-explained.html
- http://www.windley.com/archives/2005/12/xris_xdis_and_i.shtml
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDI
- also see Data addressing and sharing using XDI
Tagging
Put Tagging into the RDF framework
Dublin core defines a set of foundational verbs (among other things).
Axil asks, how about using WagN for product information? This has been done some, see http://hooze.org/
Authentication/authority of data source and timestamp statements are prone to infinite recursion, so must be handled outside of the system, or there has to be some kind of checking so as to not endlessly timestamp timestamp statements, or make authentication statements about authentication statements.
Example triples (these are pseudo-code-like, in that they may use standard RDF verbs):
- lewis practices zen
- lewis is-a zen-practitioner
- lewis is-a User
- user has-a name
- user has-a address
- user has-a city
- 42135692 name-is Lewis - aliases "Lewis" to unique id
How they might work out in Wagn:
- Lewis description <card text> - holds regular text of Lewis card (special interface)
- Lewis hair.color blond normal appearance at bottom of page
- Lewis tags.are drummer meditator - tag list, in an editable text field (special interface)
Lewis suggests that users might use something like a Venn Interface to look at items tagged with something (a duple statement, even if it's represented internally as a triple) and drag into another sector which creates an explicitly triple relationship (e.g. Lewis tagged meditator -> Lewis practices meditation). In this way, tags might be a gentle on-ramp for users to get involved in database design.
