Re: [Mediann] Ad. "Return Type / String vs Uri" - Issue

Hi Pierre-Antoine, all,

I adhere to this OO-like approach you propose. Using objects we could wrap 
all the elements of our particular "value description model". This way the 
one who calls the API function does not need to deal with an extra grammar 
(e.g. DC-TEXT, DC-RDF, etc.).

I specially like the "value description model" of Dublin Core (from the 
DCAM's Description Set Model):

(from http://dublincore.org/documents/dc-text/)

(the return of our function will be the "value surrogate")

"[...]
- a value surrogate is either a literal value surrogate or a non-literal 
value surrogate
  - a literal value surrogate is made up of
    - exactly one value string
  - a non-literal value surrogate is made up of
    - zero or one value URIs
    - zero or one vocabulary encoding scheme URIs
    - zero or more value strings
- a value string is either a plain value string or a typed value string
  - a plain value string may be associated with a value string language
  - a typed value string is associated with a syntax encoding scheme URI
- a non-literal value may be described by another description
"

If we were using Java it would be something like this:

//abstract class Value

//Class LiteralValue inherits from class Value
  ValueString literalValueString

//Class NonLiteralValue  inherits from class Value
  String nonLiteralValueURI
  String nonLiteralValueVocabularyEncodingSchemeURI
  ValueString valueStrings [N]

//Class ValueString
  String string
  String stringLanguage
  String syntaxEncodingSchemeURI

Best regards,

Ruben

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Pierre-Antoine Champin" <pchampin@liris.cnrs.fr>
To: "Felix Sasaki" <fsasaki@w3.org>
Cc: "Tobias Bürger" <tobias.buerger@sti2.at>; 
<public-media-annotation@w3.org>
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2008 1:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Mediann] Ad. "Return Type / String vs Uri" - Issue



Felix Sasaki a écrit :
>
> Hi Tobias,
>
> I think this is a very good example on how to make a distinction between
> "only string value" and "URI value" on the metadata level, and it would
> be great to have it in a wiki page. However, IMO we are going to provide
> an API which should provide access on a metamodel metadata level. Or to
> put this into a question: If we have a method getSubject, should it return
> 1) the complete DC-TEXT presentation
> 2) the completet RDF/XML representation
> 3) If the input is example 1: the URI. If yes, how does the API "know"
> that it needs to do that?
> 4) If the input is example 2: the string value. If yes, how does the API
> "know" that it needs to do that?
>
> I think you are aiming for 3) and 4), but I'm not sure.

a 5th option would be, as suggested at the last telecon, to return a
JSON object with two attributes "uri" and "text". The burden on the
developer would be low (append ".uri" or ".text" after the returned
value), and the API would not have to "know" what is required.

  pa

Received on Friday, 19 December 2008 14:14:43 UTC