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At 04:03 AM 11/5/2004, Mike Taylor wrote: > > Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 03:46:12 -0500 > > From: Eliot Christian <[log in to unmask]> > > > > My biggest issue in developing this context set is: What should we > > do when there is more than one index name with the same semantics > > within a given context set? > >In general, I think we should absolutely avoid this. > >However -- >[...] > > So, should the CQL context set list "dc.author" as an alias for > > "dc.creator"? > >This particular mistake may now be so widespread that we'd do better >to bend with the wind rather than breaking. I agree that it would be folly to emit an error message on receipt of "dc.author". Perhaps what we have here is a philosophical issue: Does a context set *reflect* the manner in which a community labels its indexes, or does a context set *dictate* the manner in which a community labels its indexes? My own sense is that CQL ought to give communities quite a lot of flexibility, with the idea being to maximize interoperability by supporting existing practice as much as possible. (I also note that it is a simple matter for the community to just slightly tweak the semantics to make an index distinct if aliases were prohibited.) I am wondering about the rules on inheriting from one context set to another. For instance, the index named "identifier" occurs in the Record Metadata http://srw.cheshire3.org/contextSets/rec/1.1/ as "A unique local identifier for the record within the current context". This is quite general and similar to Dublin Core, where it is defined as "An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context." So, should the practice be to have rec inherit this index from dc or should dc inherit from rec. (My sense is that DCMI insists on dc being the "uber set" and admits no supersets.)