[mdx] MDX & expressing communites-of-interest

[Ian Young]

On 20 May 2009, at 16:20, Josh Howlett wrote:

>> Of course, until end entities can understand this, a metadata
>> publisher might need to transform such things into something
>> that would work for their subscribers by, for example,
>> turning them into some kind of tag on the individual
>> entities.
>
> Isn't an aggregate representing the members of a community GET'd  
> from a
> well-known location more likely to match current metadata distribution
> practices? It seems more scalable also, in that entities can be  
> divided
> into smaller distinct aggregates, rather than published within a  
> single
> mega-aggregate.

I think we may be at crossed porpoises.  That paragraph was responding  
to your comment that requiring changes to end entities in the short  
term was likely to be a problem.  One approach to that is for the  
local aggregator to take the list of entities from the affiliation  
entity (however acquired, including from a fixed location somewhere)  
and use it to synthesise tags of some kind on the metadata for the  
individual entities.  That doesn't imply that the aggregator ever has,  
or ever delivers, a mega-aggregate.  It could be delivering an  
aggregate formed from the union of multiple communities, but not all.

Another approach would of course be for the aggregator to use the list  
of entities from the affiliation entity (however acquired) to generate  
an aggregate containing only those entities.  I'm not keen on this,  
though, as it only works when everyone you want to talk to is in  
exactly one such collection.

	-- Ian



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