Re: A simple situation shows confusion about basic concepts

> The first entity represents a /universal concept/.
> The second entity represents entries in a knowledge base or a conceptual
> graph. Those entries establish binary relationships between pairs of
> /universal concepts/, the entity previously described.
> So, basically, the KB is a collection of entries which represent binary
> connections of different types between UCs.

It seems you are trying to implement what I call generic data modelling. To do this, one starts with two tables: Tbl_Things and Tbl_RelationshipBetweenThings.
These correspond to your UniversalConcept and KnowledgeBase. The implementation may have the following concerns:

1) Speed. Processing time may become a limiting factor.
2) Lack SQL support and greater coding is required.
3) A truely generic system is not practical, if not impossible.

> Many UCs can relate to many other UCs in various ways.
> So /South America/ *contains* /Brazil/, /Uruguay/, and /Columbia/
> and /South America/ *is a* /continent/. /Brazil/
> *contains* /Santa Catarina/ which *contains* /Florianopolis/.

In XDB2, an experimental db, the above is encoded with the following script (without any tables, NULLs, or redundant things):

CREATE2 *continent.cls = thing;
CREATE2 *country.cls = thing;
CREATE2 *region.cls = thing;
CREATE2 *city.cls = thing;
CREATE2 *person.cls = thing;
CREATE2 *weight.cls = thing;

CREATE2 *South America.cls = continent;
CREATE2 *Brazil.cls = country;
CREATE2 *Uruguay.cls = country;
CREATE2 *Columbia.cls = country;
CREATE2 *Santa Catarina.cls = region;

CREATE2 South America.part = Brazil;
CREATE2 Brazil.part = Santa Catarina;
CREATE2 Santa Catarina.part = Florianopolis; CREATE2 Florianopolis.part = Ney;
CREATE2 Ney.weight = 180;

One view of the above things in a tree appears as below: thing
  inst: continent
    inst: South America

      part: Brazil
        part: Santa Catarina
          part: Florianopolis
            part: Ney
              weight: 180

Note: inst/cls are abbreviations for instance/class. Received on Thu Oct 28 2004 - 01:29:07 CEST