RE: how to: ordered collection of a Concept

AAT has notations, these are the primary keys of concepts, e.g. "300019279" is "Iron Age".
Using notations for ordering is NOT a good idea, because there's no guarantee notations will be in any reasonable order.
AAT has a separate field in the database. We will map it to a custom field (gvp:sortOrder), 
but the subject of this discussion is how to map it in a standard way.

The standard way is the rdf:List in skos:OrderedCollection (and same for an iso:ThesaurusArray that is ordered).

> - Must the (possibly multiple) ordering be represented in generic RDF constructs (rdf:List).
> - Must a modeling schema detail the (possibly multiple) thesaurus orderings in dedicated RDF/S or OWL constructs.

Creating such a list is a finickly job, and I'm not sure whether there exists a TMS consuming such lists, but 
the SKOS standard is clear: we must use rdf:List.
Each skos:OrderedCollection (or iso:ThesaurusArray that is ordered) may impose its own list on its members.
In the case of the Getty thesauri, the list of members may vary in the poly-hierarchy, but the order between them will be always the same.
In other thesauri, it may be different.

My question is how to order the children of a *concept*. 
Here's an AAT example: Iron Age is a concept that has ordered children.
http://www.getty.edu/vow/AATHierarchy?find=300198841&logic=AND&note=&subjectid=300019279

My question is how to relate the skos:OrderedCollection=iso:ThesaurusArray to this parent concept.

I propose iso:equivalentArray for this. It's not an ideal solution, since we'd still need to make an Array node and give it labels...
Unfortunately both SKOS and ISO are adamant that Concept is disjoint from Collection, Array and Group.
But neither has thought that Concept shares a lot of features with Collection, Array and Group: 
they all have labels, they can hold children, those can be ordered...
This causes spurious differences in representation, that we should strive to eliminate as much as possible.

An aside:
- IMHO, skos:Collection and skos:OrderedCollection are defunct since you can't place them under anything.
- so I welcome the addition of iso:ThesaurusArray
- on the other hand, iso:ConceptGroup can't be ordered and you can't place an Array under a Group, so we won't be using Group in representing the Getty thesauri

Your advise and feedback is most welcome!
Cheers! Vladimir

Received on Sunday, 10 November 2013 20:20:22 UTC