data modelling and FRBR WEMI ontology
Jonathan Rochkind writes to defend the FRBR WEMI ontology:
Karen Coyle writes on the RDA listserv:
FRBR claims to be based on a “relational” model, as in “relational database.” That is not tomorrow’s data model; it is yesterday’s, although it is a step toward tomorrow’s model. The difficulty is that FRBR was conceived of in the early 1990′s, and completed in the late 1990′s. That makes it about 15 years old.
I think it would have been just as much a mistake to tie the FRBR model to an RDF model as it would have/was to tie it to a relational database model. Whatever we come up with is going to last us more than 15 years, and things will change again. Now, I’ll admit that I’m heretically still suspicious that an RDF data model will in fact be ‘the future’. But even if it is, there will be another future (or simultaneous futures plural).
And concludes:
I tend to think they should have just gone with ‘set theory’ oriented language, because it is, I think, the most clear, while still being abstract enough to make it harder to think the WEMI ontology is tied to some particular technology like relational databases OR linked data. I think WEMI gets it right regardless of whether you speak in the language of ‘relational’, ‘set theory’, ‘object orientation’ or ‘linked data’/RDF.
Leaving my qualms about RDF to one side, I write to point out that choosing “set theory” is a choice of a particular technology or if you like, tradition.
If that sounds odd, consider how many times you have used set theory in the last week, month, year? Unless you are a logician or introductory mathematics professor, the odds are that the number is zero (0) (or the empty set, {},for any logicians reading this post).
Choosing “set theory” is to choose a methodology that very few people use in practice. The vast majority of people make choices, evaluate outcomes, live complex lives innocent of the use of set theory.
I don’t object to FRBR or other efforts choosing to use “set theory” but recognize it is a minority practice.
One that elevates a minority over the majority of users.