[Zope3-dev] Vocabularies, sources and relationships

[Michel Pelletier]

On Thursday 07 April 2005 11:24 am, Michel Pelletier wrote:

> I haven't looked at the ST library much, I get the impressions it's more
> focused on similar uses to that of Archetype references, which is great.
> There are features in AT refs that would be a bit clumsy to implement in
> Zemantic (like relationships being persistent objects with behavior and
> data) although not at all impossible.
>
> Clumsy unless you need your relationships to span systems and applications.
> The your relationship model must be based on something like RDF or its
> equivalent (something that does not apply application specifc
> interpretation to the stored references).  The other upshot of using
> something like RDF is that you are not inventing a whole relational model
> that does not necessiarly play natively with others.

I should probably be more clear by saying that I don't know if ST's package 
has these same benefits as RDF, Kapil and Ben told me it's based on an XML 
linking standard (XLink?) so it's quite possible. Kapil also pointed out to 
me that exporting one relational set onto another is, one way or the other, 
pretty straightforward if one wants to "span systems and applications".  RDF 
is just one standardized way to do this with minimal pain, and as I 
understand it there are others (topic maps, A. Water's xsdb, probably many 
more...)

-Michel