Atom and the Baetles

[Henry Story]

Hi,

I am developing a bug ontology called Baetle [1]. Working on this one
can't help but notice the
similarity between an Issue and a atom feed or collection.

Just look at the NetBeans bug:

http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=14731

Here we have a thing that has a bunch of metadata associated with it,
some of which we know quite well
- title
- summary
- author
- creation date
- tags/categories

And it has some content in the form of attachments and comments.

So I am wondering if a Issue is a Collection. If an Issue is a Task,
then can a task also be an atom collection?

Here is how one could model the above issue in atomOwl

@prefix : <http://bblfish.net/work/atom-owl/2006-06-06/#> .
@prefix baetle: <http://xmlns.com/baetle/#> .

<http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=14731>
a :Feed;
:title "Issue 14731";
:summary "NbClassPath.getClassPath() should not add quotes";
:author <http://netbeans.org/people/mruflin#p>;
:created "Thu Aug 23 12:30:00T+0000 2001"^^xsd:easyToReadDateTime;
:category [ :scheme <http://netbeans.org/wiki/>;
:term "API" ];
:id <http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=14731#issue>;
:entry [ :title "Additional comments from mmirilovic Fri Jul 25
17:16:49 +0000 2003";
:author <http://netbeans.org/people/mmirilovic#p>;
:content "Without new informations for long time -
verifying.";
];
.

I won't fill everything out here.

Clearly the feed above could also be a collection.
Now the question is, does it makes sense to have a collection or a
feed also be a Task? If it does then one can easily go on and add
relations such as

<http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=14731>
baetle:status [ a baetle:ClosedState ];
baetle:assigned_to <http://netbeans.org/people/sdedic#p>;
baetle:resolution <http://netbeans.org/checkins/123123>;
baetle:interested <http://netbeans.org/people/jglick#p>
.

And so on.

I suppose it's a little weird only in so far as an issue is a
document too. So to have a copyright on a Issue seems a little
weird. But perhaps that's not such a problem, and people can get
over it....

Or perhaps what one needs is to express a relation between the feed
and the task, something like this

<http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=14731>
baetle:aboutIssue [ is <http://www.netbeans.org/issues/
show_bug.cgi?id=14731#issue>;
a baetle:Issue;
baetle:status [ a baetle:ClosedState ];
baetle:assigned_to <http://netbeans.org/
people/sdedic#p>;
baetle:resolution <http://netbeans.org/
checkins/123123>;
baetle:interested <http://netbeans.org/
people/jglick#p>
];
.

That seems better in fact, now that I think about it. Here the issue
has it's own metadata, and the feed is a discussion forum around that
issue.

But then one has the nagging feeling that one may have to duplicate a
lot of the information, so for example the updated time stamp on the
Issue may need to change with the updated on the feed. Or the author
of the issue, would have to be the same as the author of the feed...

Any ideas on this?

Henry Story

[1] still early stages: http://code.google.com/p/baetle/
[2] Still needs some work on how best to represent content,
but it's been pretty stable here
http://bblfish.net/work/atom-owl/2006-06-06/

Home page: http://bblfish.net/
Sun Blog: http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/
Foaf name: http://bblfish.net/people/henry/card#me

[Henry Story]

Mhh,

Perhaps all it really needs is the about link. That could be general
enough to work for a feed dealing with any topic.

Or perhaps what one needs is to express a relation between the feed
and the task, something like this

<http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=14731>
a :Feed;
:about <http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?
id=14731#issue> .

so in atom xml

<feed>
<link rel="about" href="http://www.netbeans.org/issues/
show_bug.cgi?id=14731#issue"/>
<title>Bug 14731</title>
....
</feed>

Probably was just a atom syntax issue then. I don't want to repost
to atom syntax, to avoid spamming.

Henry