[sc34wg3] Comments on Tau model

[Robert Barta]

On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 09:32:08PM +0200, Jan Algermissen wrote:
> > > Ah! That's what you understand Topic Maps (as a paradigm, not the docs)
> > > 'are'. Unfortunately, I have no idea what you mean by
> > >
> > > - infrastructure
> > >
> > > - information model
> > >
> Well, fair enough....OTH, you *do* have an understanding and appearantly
> /tau satisfies it. Interestingly, it does not satisfy *my* understanding,
> so I would be soooo happy if you could define/explain the terms (loosely).
> I PROMISE, I won't do nitpicking on the language :o)

OK, I have alerted my lawyer, just in case :-)

infrastructure:

   We need languages to write, modify, transform, constrain
   and query topic maps. These languages (preferable with a common
   set of concepts) is the 'infrastructure' I am talking about.

information model:

   I think I already covered it in an earlier posting, but my view is
   that at the moment we are dealing with the following information models

    - table-like (based on tables with cross-references)

    - tree-like (earlier hierarchical data models, now XML)

    - graph-like (RDF, TMs, ...)

    - and unstructured text streams

These are first data models. Depending on your data, you may
choose one or more of them.

And then you have the technology: RDBs for relational data, XML DBs
(or relational databases) for tree-like data, etc. This is more about
speed and flexibility (and, uhm, cost).

Hope this answers this a bit.

\rho