[oslc-cm] repetition pattern of related properties (was: OSLC Change Management 2.0 Specification is in Convergence and Ready for further Review)

[Steve K Speicher]

Hi Frank,

Thanks for the feedback, you'll find response below.

> From: Frank Schophuizen <fschophuizen at gmail.com>
> To: oslc-cm at open-services.net
> Date: 05/22/2010 11:19 AM
> Subject: Re: [oslc-cm] OSLC Change Management 2.0 Specification is 
> in Convergence and Ready for further Review
> Sent by: oslc-cm-bounces at open-services.net
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> Since I stepped in only recently, I don't know if this is the 
> appropriate why to respond. If not, please let me know.

This is an appropriate way.

> I was reading the Relationship Properties of the CmSpecificationV2 
> section and I notice a repetition pattern, for example:
> relatedRequirement, relatedTestCase, relatedExecutionRecord, 
relatedTestPlan
> 
> I was wondering why not define a single relationship property: 
relatedObject
> of (tuple) type: (Resource, Type of Resource)
> That way we can relate to any object as long as it is defined as a 
> type of resource by the service provider. Similarly for the 
> relationships other than "related".
> 
> We could even define the relationship into the relationship property: 
> relatedObject of (triple) type: (Resource, Type of Resource, Type of
> Relationship)

We had discussed these alternatives within the workgroup when defining 
these properties.  Mainly around the "oslc:manages" property, where it was 
discussed that is could be extended to other resource types: change sets, 
assets, requirements, etc.  Though since we are building on an extensible 
data model, we felt we didn't need to build extensibility into the 
relationship properties.  It had more value to define more semantics of 
the property by adding resource type information for a number of scenarios 
like query and reporting.

One this we could consider, perhaps at a more general OSLC Common 
Properties, is the usage of Dublin Core's dc:related property.  Though by 
the nature of building off an RDF data model, we can already infer when 
resources are "related".   We haven't seen a strong scenario need for this 
general purpose dc:related property.

Regards,,
Steve Speicher | IBM Rational Software | (919) 254-0645
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