Successor Association

[ehandel]

Hello!

I would like to create a successor-predecessor-association. For example chapter 1 is predecessor of chapter 2 and chapter 2 is successor of chapter 1. As I've understood the explanation in "Reduced Topic Maps" number 9, this ist impossible with the "normal" Wandora associations because the players would have the same role. Is there any possiblity to create such an association?
And similar to this problem: Can I create such a thing as reciprocal associations? For example the associations has-author [book, author] and is-author [author, book].

Thanks!

[akivela]

Hi Ehandel

You can create successor-predecessor-associations in Wandora:

• Create topic labeled as successor-predecessor and use it as association type.
• Create topic labeled as successor and use it as a role for association member that represents successor.
• Create topic labeled as predecessor and use it as a role for association member that represents predecessor.

As topic map associations have no direction, you have to create the direction by labeling association members. If you would use the topic successor-predecessor as the association type and the topic chapter as the role of both association members, it would be impossible to deduce which chapter was successor and which predecessor. This feature of associations having no direction is very different compared to the RDF triplets that have natural direction and relation successor-predecessor carries implicit information about the direction.

About reciprocal associations. In fact, you don't need reciprocal associations as the association have no direction -- or, to be more specific, the direction of an association is created by roles. If you still want to create associations based on existing associations, Wandora doesn't create such associations automatically and you should create such associations manually one by one or by copying the existing associations into the Excel, for example, and pasting the associations back to the Wandora after you have changed the association type. However, I would think it carefully before creating such associations. It may be difficult to keep these two association groups in sync.

Kind Regards,
Aki / Wandora Team