Re: how to: ordered collection of a Concept

Sorry to join in so late. Probably most of the queries have now been 
answered; I'll add just a couple of points of general interest/explanation:
1. According to the ISO 25964 model, an array does not need to come
"under" any other concept, term or label. You can, for example, have an
array of siblings at the very top level of a thesaurus without any BT or
node label. Optionally, an array may have a node label. Optionally also,
it may have a superordinate concept. It must have at least one member
concept (and the idea of "array" seems meaningless until there are  at
least two concepts in it).

To put it another way, the feature of requiring a particular ordering of 
siblings has much more to do with the relationship between the siblings 
than between a sibling and its parents (if any).

2. As Antoine has pointed out, ordering is not all that common in modern 
thesauri (although it is needed more often in other forms of KOS, such 
as classification schemes). And the same is even more true of notation. 
Although the ISO 25964 model provides for ordering, notation and node 
labels, it can be implemented in a much simpler way by thesauri that 
possess none of these features.


3. As Leonard has pointed out, the AAT gives each concept an identifier
(such as "300106739" for "Iron Age") that is not designed for use as a
notation. There was a time when the AAT did have a notation system, 
which was useful for locating a concept in the hierarchies shown in the 
printed editions. Within each facet the books showed a simple running 
number, rather than a fully expressive notation. And the number was 
re-generated each time they produced a new printed edition. However, 
this notation seems to have been dropped when they decided not to 
produce any more printed editions.

I mention this mainly to illustrate that the form taken by the notation
system of a particular thesaurus can be highly idiosyncratic. For this
reason, although ISO 25964 makes provision for the existence of a
notation, it does not make any assumptions about the way that notation
will be used, either for ordering or anything else.

I don't know how the AAT nowadays ensures the order of siblings in an
array - although I expect there is an explanation among the notes
supplied if you obtain a licensed copy with all the hidden data.

Anyway, I hope you've now found a safe way through all the complications.
Stella Dextre Clarke

*****************************************************
Stella Dextre Clarke
Project Leader, ISO NP 25964
Luke House, West Hendred, Wantage, OX12 8RR, UK
Tel: 01235-833-298
Fax: 01235-863-298
stella@lukehouse.org
*****************************************************

On 13/11/2013 08:46, Vladimir Alexiev wrote:
> The specific topic was how to order the children of a *Concept*. I
> take Leonard's suggestion to use an *anonymous* subordinateArray
> under the concept. Does anyone have a better suggestion?
>
> --
>
> This below is about ordering in general.
>
>> Ordering is not so common (not saying that it's super-rare, but
>> it's certainly not the majority of cases). Most applications
>> (except the very applications that are dedicated to building or
>> viewing 'ordered schemes') that we've seen don't really use them.
>
> I had the same hunch... Does anyone know any TMS (thesaurus
> management system) that consumes the rdf:List of a
> skos:OrderedCollection?
>
> It's a bit tricky to produce that list, but it *is* the current
> standard way, so we'll do it. Gregg, given a parent P and its
> *ordered* children C1..Cn, can you come up with queries to return: -
> <P,C1> - <P,Ci,Ci+1> for i=1..n-1 - <P,Cn>
>
> We'll also use 2 more mechanisms: - custom field gvp:sortOrder -
> store triples in order (a total order of concepts that respects their
> sibling order). OWLIM happens to preserve order in result sets
>
>> The current skos:(Order)Collection construct has the benefit of not
>> standing in the path of consuming data. It is really an extra layer
>> on top of the simple hierarchy. People interested in the order can
>> exploit it if they want. Those who don't care will very safely
>> ignore it.
>
> Oh, I agree with the rdf:List construct. What was missing until now
> was a way to put it under a concept or another collection. ISO adds
> that.
>
>
>


-- 
*****************************************************
Stella Dextre Clarke
Information Consultant
Luke House, West Hendred, Wantage, OX12 8RR, UK
Tel: 01235-833-298
Fax: 01235-863-298
stella@lukehouse.org
*****************************************************

Received on Wednesday, 13 November 2013 13:06:47 UTC