> -----Original Message-----
> From: SRU (Search and Retrieve Via URL) Implementors
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of Robert Sanderson
> Sent: 29 November 2005 16:59
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Proximity search and Brahmagupta
> 
> >> What does a distance=10 mean for some arbitrary element? How do we
> >> view order or direction?
> 
> >I've built systems with proximity across elements.  Imagine this
case:
> ><rec>
> >  <author>C. J. Cherryh</author>
> >  <title>Brother at Arms</title>
> >  </rec>
> 
> >I'm looking to see if Cherryh wrote "Brother at Arms".  The search
is:
> >Author=cherryh prox/unit=element/distance=1 title="brother at arms"
> >That means that the author must occur in the element immediately
> >preceeding the title.
 
> I agree with Ralph, and have done the same thing.  While we dont have
a
> notion of an element tree (ala XML) in CQL, I would say that notion of
> different elements enclosing data is essential, and that you might
wish
> to expose their ordering as in the case above.
> 
> Which is not to say that I want an element tree, I dont think that's a
> role that CQL should try to take.  It's also not to say that I think
> that element proximity is important for everyone to implement or even
> worry about ... the number of cases when it's actually useful is very
> limited.  The only reason that it has come up in this discussion is
> because of the use of CQL to search *syntax* rather than *semantics*.
> (So I blame Mike and Matthew! :) )

It would be nice if CQL did address this issue.

As more complex digital objects are developed we will want to provide
more complex searches. For example :

A database of illuminations from illuminated manuscripts has 4 entities,
the image, the illumination, the manuscript and the bound volume
containing the manuscript. It is legitimate to search for say :

	A type of image
	for an illumination with a particular subject
	from manuscripts from a particular date
	which originate from a particular provenance 

(provenance is a characteristic of the volume in this data model) 

Also using FRBR might we not wish to search something along the lines of


	Find expressions with
	manifestation of date x to y
	for work of title y

To me this suggests the search language requires some way of identifying
the relationship between different entities in the data model. We avoid
this with current "flat" file systems, but we will need it in the
future.

Bill

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