Skip to main content

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index] [List Home]
RE: [higgins-dev] Telecon to discuss alternatives to Node

I agree that Entity/DigitalEntity solves the problem of distinguishing between the thing-being-represented and the representation itself. And in the case of Higgins, we know the representation is always going to be digital (in the ITU paper, they called it “representation of identity” because not all the representations they were referring to were necessarily digital).

 

The irony from a pure practicality standpoint is that we’d be going from a single-syllable four-letter word (“node”) to a six-syllable 13-letter word.

 

=Drummond

 


From: higgins-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:higgins-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Nataraj Nagaratnam
Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2008 8:45 AM
To: Higgins (Trust Framework) Project developer discussions
Cc: 'Higgins (Trust Framework) Project developer discussions'; higgins-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [higgins-dev] Telecon to discuss alternatives to Node

 

These nuances about when something is blank, complexnode etc are good for us - developers who understand and entrenched in the system. But for those app developers and community interested in what Higgins has to offer, I think we need to keep it simple in terms of what they are interested in dealing with (persons, org, devices, etc). Thus the terminology is important.

So there are couple of things over the different threads of discussions

  1. Terminology
    In this context, Greg summarized -
    The debate here is what Higgins should call the digital representation of an Entity.  

    That seems to be the case. If so ..
    how about "DigitalEntity"? This way we have different terms for the thing-being-represented and representation itself... as Entity and DigitalEntity respectively. Will that help with the debate/discussion here? We had used DigitalSubject.. so I think we are not averse to the idea of having a prefix 'Digital.'... and this may also help keep some obvious consistency/relationship between the two terms even for someone new to Higgins.
  2. Semantics
    Like Jim and Tony have expressed in their notes - I also do not believe we should use the same term for primary entity objects (like person, org etc), as well as for their complex value attributes or any other object/data/metadata that maybe associated with. This will create confusion - if it confuses us (dev community), then it is guaranteed to confuse those outside this dev list.
    This semantic separation, that gets well reflected in terminology, is important for consumability of our APIs to developers and community outside the Higgins dev list.



-Raj





Inactive hide details for "Paul Trevithick" ---03/02/2008 09:14:57 AM---Jim,"Paul Trevithick" ---03/02/2008 09:14:57 AM---Jim,

"Paul Trevithick" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: higgins-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx

03/02/2008 09:14 AM

Please respond to
"Higgins \(Trust Framework\) Project developer discussions" <higgins-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>

To


"'Higgins \(Trust Framework\) Project developer discussions'" <higgins-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>

cc

Subject


RE: [higgins-dev] Telecon to discuss alternatives to Node

 


Jim,

I should have explained. The diagram reflects some proposed updates to the model, not what’s in v1.0 of the data model. I’ve been working on a series of changes, improvements to the model as part of the HOWL update. As part of this when we moved away from using RDF reification, this simplification became clear: complex values can now be Nodes or BlankNodes. If it is a Node and if/when we move over to the updated model IContext.getNode(<someNodID>) should return a complex value. A BlankNode is a node without a NodeID. If the complex value is a BlankNode, then it cannot be found using IContext.getNode (which gets us back to where we are with complex values in v1.0).

-Paul


From: higgins-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:higgins-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jim Sermersheim
Sent:
Sunday, March 02, 2008 6:50 AM
To:
'Higgins (Trust Framework) Project developer discussions'
Subject:
Re: [higgins-dev] Telecon to discuss alternatives to Node


Ok, either I'm confused now, or IdAS is not representing things as you describe them, Paul. In IdAS, a complex attribute is not a node. Otherwise someone would be able to get that node using IContext.getNode(<someNodeID>). I know I may be using screwed up logic to come to this understanding of what you're saying. Let me know if I am.

Jim

>>> "Paul Trevithick" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 03/01/08 10:45 PM >>>


Although Entity was the winner of the vote, it was decided at the Higgins call last Thursday that we needed a dedicated call to make sure that we’re all on the same page as to exactly what we’re naming here. We felt that we needed at least one of the folks proposing the winning “Entity” term to be present on the call before we can finalize this issue. The non-Entity folks were not convinced that we’re all seeing the problem (never mind the solution) the same way.



To try to get to closure, I’ve created: http://doodle.ch/7sfxpr6hvu29wnys to pick a good time on Wednesday to discuss this.



One more thing...



Nodes don’t just represent people and their interconnections in the social graph. Nodes (along with Attributes) are the building blocks for representing
everything
: People, Groups, Events, Documents, Postal Addresses in a Context.



Speaking of which, here’s an example of a Node representing some partial aspect of a Person Entity that has an attribute “hasAddress” whose value is a Node representing a postal address. When the value of an attribute is a Node, we call this a “complex” (as opposed to a literal) value. Literal values are drawn as squares.







[If you’re familiar with RDF you’ll see that a Higgins Node is almost exactly the same concept as an RDF node.]



If, after the discussion, we all think we really are seeing the issues the same way, then we’ll settle on Entity as the Node replacement, as it was the most popular term.



-Paul



I did think of one other word too: “item”.



_______________________________________________
higgins-dev mailing list
higgins-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
https://dev.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/higgins-dev


Back to the top