Re: [xml-dev] RE: Abstraction in Science, Mathematics, Software, and Mar

[Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>]

typo correction:
> Maybe it could be logically defined (according to
> Roger's 'crossProduct' proposal) crossProductThing to which every
> can have an 'is-a' relationship.

I meant:

Maybe it could be logically defined (according to
Roger's 'crossProduct' proposal) crossProductThing to which every
thing in a schema represented by an element (and/or type?) can
have an 'is-a' relationship.

----
Stephen D Green



On 14 March 2011 14:04, Stephen D Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe there is an (extended) XSD meta-meta-type akin to the OWL
> 'Thing' which is completely abstract with every possible 'has-a' and
> every possible 'is-a'. Maybe it could be logically defined (according to
> Roger's 'crossProduct' proposal) crossProductThing to which every
> can have an 'is-a' relationship. In UBL we had a concept in the early
> days of what we called an 'Ur-type' (after the city Ur from which
> supposedly every language developed?). That seems to be similar.
>
> These levels of abstraction do seem to have parallels in the ISO CCTS
> implemented by languages such as UBL which then provides the data
> dictionary naming conventions.
>
> ----
> Stephen D Green
>
>
>
> On 12 March 2011 23:14, Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com> wrote:
>> On 12/03/2011 10:34, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Stephen,
>>>
>>>> Are you suggesting or even hinting that it should be possible
>>>> to define a type whose contents are types rather than elements?
>>>
>>> Funny you should ask! Yes!
>>>
>>> A couple weeks ago I pitched that very idea on the xmlschema-dev list:
>>>
>>
>> Well, "complexType" and "simpleType" are the names of two types whose
>> instances are types - the set of complexTypes and the set of simpleTypes
>> respectively. I guess Roger's "cross-product" is another type whose
>> instances are types, though he presented it more as a constructor for new
>> types, akin to construction-by-list and construction-by-union.
>>
>> The IRDS model from the 1980s had four layers: loosely, objects like "John
>> Smith", types like "Person", meta-types like "Complex Type", and
>> meta-meta-types like "Concept". The things in each layer are instances of
>> the types in the layer above. The idea was that the meta-meta-types were
>> fixed (they define the ontological framework), but the meta-types are
>> completely extensible - the idea being that you can always incorporate new
>> "data models" like the relational model, the XML model, etc.
>>
>> I put "data model" in quotes, because one of the problems is that the term
>> is used by some people to mean a set of types like "Person", and by others
>> to mean a set of meta-types like "Complex Type".
>>
>> Michael Kay
>> Saxonica
>>
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>