| [higgins-dev] IdAS: One attribute per type per DS |
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<trying to clean up as many low-hanging issues as I can while the IdAS interfaces are in flux>
From previous phone calls, higgins-dev traffic and #higgins IRC traffic, I believe consensus is that we want to return the data model to one where there is only one attribute of a given type on any digital subject.
There is some remaining work (IIRC) to do in the higgins.owl, but I think we can make the change to the IdAS APIs right now. This change consists of removing the metadata Iterator argument from IHasAttributes.getAttribute(URI attrID, Iterator metadata). This was here so we could disambiguate between two same-named attributes. It was a bad idea from the IdAS consumer's PoV.
We currently still have the ability to associate metadata with attributes, and we don't yet have the ability to associate it with values. We could address this at the same time. There's a good argument to allow metadata on the values, and some have expressed interest in removing metadata from attributes.
I suspect there are reasons to continue to allow metadata at the attribute.
If we allow metadata at the value, we need to decide whether it plays into the value's equality rule (please say no).
Jim
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