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On Aug 4, 2011, at 4:17 PM, stuart yeates wrote:
> On 04/08/11 13:09, Peter Murray wrote:
>> Thanks for the reply, Stuart.  With the first question, I've updated the diagram to add an "Association" entity.  (Technically, I don't think this is an entity but rather a specialization of a relationship.)  This is based off some great work I saw at the NITRC.  Take a look at the "Associations" section of these page:
>> 
>>   http://www.nitrc.org/projects/fcon_1000/
>>   http://www.nitrc.org/projects/fsl/
>> 
>> This fits the use case you describe and that of modules that would be a part of a Drupal installation or how djatoka can be a component of several different projects.
>> 
>> Regarding the second question, I think of standards as a kind of "technology".  I've added "standard" to the list of enumerations at http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Registry_E-R_Diagram
> 
> So in your example, if a dspace / fedora run in a servlet container 
> (which is a standard) which depends on Java (which is both a standard 
> and a project) would you be expecting to break those out?
> 
> If so, that's a lot of entities and your proposed mockups are going to 
> have to be redone; If not, you can’t do proper dependency tracking.


Well, we certainly don't want to get into a situation where we find it is turtles all of the way down.  As the model is shaping up now, there is an important distinction between an Association and a Technology.  An Association is a relationship between a Package and another Package and a Technology is an attribute of a Package.  So the key is defining what a Package is to represent, which is some unit of open source software that is unique or specific in its implementation to libraries.  (DSpace and Fedora are not necessarily specific and unique to libraries, but those two packages are highly visible in libraries and related communities.)  Tomcat as a servlet container and Java as a programming language would be considered Technologies not Packages (since they are not unique and specific to libraries) and so would not have a relationship to other packages.


Peter
-- 
Peter Murray         [log in to unmask]        tel:+1-678-235-2955                 
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