Re: [higgins-dev] schema updates in IdAS (was Re: IdAS API and Higgins o

[Valery Kokhan <vkokhan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Jim!

I think that behavior of setSchema() method is responsibility of context
providers - in some cases they may try to add new schema to existing one
while in others they may replace it. In case of our context provider
we're going to allow set up context's schema only once (when it
doesn't set yet) and all other attempts will throws an exception.

Actually, I want to discuss one more thing related to IdAS and
context's schemas.

I do not know for what purposes you are using context schemas
in context provider you're developing but in our context provider
context's schema will define whole context's behavior.
For example if "person-with-address.owl" ontology is set as context's
schema then context's consumers should be able to create only one type of
digital subjects (...ontologies/2006/person-with-address#Person)
and each instance of digital subjects may contains only three types of
attributes (firstname, surname and postalArrdess).

The question is how context's consumers could know what type of digital
subjects could be created in particular context and what attributes
they could contains?

To allow context's consumers to query context's schemas for such kind
of information I've designed small set of interfaces in our context
provider but it seems to me that such set of interfaces should be a
part of IdAS itself.

Few weeks ago I've posted proposal to add such set of interfaces to
IdAS to higgins-dev list but it seems to me (because of complete
silence on higgins-dev on this matter) that no one has understood what am
I talking about.

I think that definition of common set of interfaces to query context's
schemas in IdAS is important because in other case I do not see no any
sense in schemas at all.

Do you have any objections if I add my set of interfaces as separate
package (say "..idas.model") to IdAS project?

-- 
Thanks,

Valery

Wednesday, October 18, 2006, 8:59:57 PM, you wrote:

>  
>  
> Valery, 
>  
>  
>  
> IContext.setSchema(String schema) is now added. Doc is here

>>>> "Jim Sermersheim" <jimse@xxxxxxxxxx> 10/18/06 11:35 AM >>>
>  
> We could add IContext.setSchema(String schema). In adding that, we
> would add all the unanswered questions we have for other update
> operations (most listed here).  One additional question would be:
> does setSchema completely override the existing schema, or can it add to it?
>  
>  
>  
> I'll go ahead and add it and we can add the architectural questions to the list.
>  
>  
>  
> Jim

>>>> Valery Kokhan <vkokhan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 10/18/06 9:41 AM >>>
> Hi Jim,

> For our context provider we need a way to define (set up) context's
> schemas but current IdAS API doesn't provide any way to do this.

> It looks like in one case we'll need to be able to define context's
> schema at configuration time while in other we will need to be able to
> set context's schema at runtime.

> It seems to me that in both cases we need to add setSchema(...)
> method(s) to IContext interface.

> Have you any ideas how to set up context's schemas?