[higgins-dev] Re: IdAS questions

["Jim Sermersheim" <jimse@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry, I meant to reply but got sidetracked.

>>> "Sergey Lyakhov" <slyakhov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 11/15/06 12:22 PM >>>
>Hello Jim,
>
>I have some questions about IdAS interfaces:
>
>1. Now only IContext interface extends IHasRelationships interface.
>Formerly IDigitalSubject extended this (IHasRelationships) interface too,
>but IHasRelationships was removed from IDigitalSubject and replaced with
>higgins:SubjectRelationship attributre. I propose to remove
>IHasRelationships interface from IContext and add ContextRelationship
>attribute to higgins schema instead of it. In this case we can remove
>IHasRelationships and IRelationship interfaces from IdAS.

We could do this (as long as Paul can make ContextRelationship an attribute), but then we'd be changing the model such that IContext extends IHasAttributes.  Do others want to move that direction?  I'm ok with it, but other model purists may not be. 

>2. ISimpleValue interface contains a mapping between Higgins OWL
>datatypes/XML schema types/Java classes returned by ISimpleValue.getData()
>and IdAS basic value implementations. We need to use this mapping to
>determine which implementation of ISimpleValue (BasicValueString,
>BasicValueNormalizedString etc) should we use for appropiate subproperty of
>higgins:simpleValue (for example we need to use
>org.eclipse.higgins.idas.impl.BasicValueInteger class in case of
>higgins:integerSimpleValue property). We need the same mechanism for
>properties of ComplexValue, or, more formally, properties like pwa:state
>should be subproperties of higgins:simpleValue (higgins:stringSimpleValue,
>higgins:integerSimpleValue etc).

We've been thinking similar thoughts here.  Something along the lines of a factory where you could tell it you have a "higgins:integerSimpleValue", and the factory would produce the appropriate ISimpleValue instance.  I'll try to document some thoughts on this -- and maybe propose some code, but it may not be until next week sometime.

>3. I propose to add some methods (like as begin(), commit() and rollback()) 
>to IContext  for transaction support.

We should continue this discussion -- it looks like some decisions were made at the F2F.

>4. IContextFactory interface extends IHasMetadata interface. What is a
>purpose of this interface and how should we implement it?

I really don't remember why we added metadata to the factory.  Maybe we should remove it and wait for a real use-case to arise.  What do others think?

Jim