[ZODB-Dev] Re: [Zope3-dev] PROPOSAL: ZODB Relationships

[Shane Hathaway]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> At 10:39 AM 5/9/03 -0400, Shane Hathaway wrote:
>> One thing that perhaps wasn't made clear is that the repository 
>> doesn't directly contain relationships.  It contains named 
>> relationship sets.  I don't know if this is what you're talking 
>> about--correct me if I misunderstood.
> 
> 
> Um, what's a "named relationship set"?  That's not an entity that I 
> recall seeing named in the proposal.

True.  We're still tinkering with terminology.  Each call to the 
Relationship() constructor names a distinct relationship set.  (Oops, I 
guess the examples in the proposal don't make it possible for a 
Relationship to know its name.)  Currently there is no connection 
between relationship sets, other than being stored in the same repository.

>>> A final comment...  Once this takes directionality into 
>>> consideration, you might consider calling it an 'Association' rather 
>>> than a 'Relationship', as it would then largely meet the MOF and UML 
>>> semantics of an "Association".  That is, an association is a 
>>> collection of directed links between objects.  It would then make 
>>> sense to refer to refer to the 'RelationshipView' as an 
>>> 'AssociationEnd'.
>>
>>
>> That is an excellent idea if we can determine that this project is 
>> distinct from the Zope 3 relationship service.  It feels like the two 
>> projects are aiming to solve largely the same problem, but if they 
>> aren't, a name change will help clarify the difference.
> 
> 
> Maybe it's a pluggable *implementation* of a Z3 relationship service.  :)

I'll ponder that.  I just did a Google search for "many to many 
association" and the first hit seems to describe exactly what we're 
trying to achieve.

http://www.site.uottawa.ca:4321/oose/many-to-manyassociation.html

BTW the other definitions I looked at on that site seem quite good. 
I've been looking for a dictionary like this.

Shane