How to tag some information to an association

[mordenkainen]

I'm working with some kind of graph. Each node is represented with corresponding topic. An edge is represented with associations between topic. I'd like to add some additional information to edges such as weights.

The first thing I'd thought of is to create anonymous topic for each edge. Associate with the topic occurences for each parameter that I need to store. And after that made edges tri-associate (node, params, node) instead of bi-associate (node-node). I'm still not sure if it is apropriate way for storing ifromation and I don't know how to create automatically anonymous topics for existing associations.

[akivela]

You have figured the right solution, in my mind. Just add the additional information (a weight, for example) to the original binary-association as a third player. Now you have tri-associations. If you need to add more information to the association, add fourth player and so forth.

Topic maps standard speaks of reifiers that can be used to refer any topic map elements, including associations. Would Wandora support these reifiers, one could add the association specific information into this reifier-topic. But Wandora doesn't support reifiers, unfortunately.

[mordenkainen]

I've come to this example map http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fi ... 5492788821 . Could you provide some commentaries about it?

[akivela]

Here is the Wandora project file Mordenkainen submitted for review.

[akivela]

Hello

Nice work. You have literally modeled the graph nodes and edges. Nodes are connected to edge topics that carry an occurrence text for distance and time. The idea is that distance and time are properties of the edge.

I have attached two alternative examples that are little simpler, in my mind.

First example (test_v2_1.wpr) models Connected locations with quad-associations. Association roles are Location, Connected location, Distance and Time.

Second example (test_v2_2.wpr) is similar to the first example but models Distances and Times separately. There are two different associations types: Distance and Time. Both association types have tri-associations. Addition to Location and Connected location roles the association contains either Distance or Time role.

What is weak in these alternatives, is the requirement for symmetric associations. If Amber is connected to Ankh-Morpork, there must be a separate association for reverse connection too. Yet another weakness (or strength, it depends) is the distance and time topics. It requires some additional attention when the author edits scalar value topic that may be player in several associations. What is definitely a strength in these examples, is the ease of editing/importing/exporting. One can easily import/export association tables from/to spreadsheet applications such as MS Excel and do some of the editing there. It took me only few minutes to copy stuff from your topic map to Open Office Calc and paste ready associations back to Wandora.

Deciding which way to go, requires a larger vision and is little a matter of taste.

Kind Regards,
Aki / Wandora Team

[akivela]

And the second example topic map is here.