[Data-modeling] Visual Art Form - an enumerated type?

[Jeff Prucher]

The trick with phylogeny patterns is that there's only one type. The
"parent" property has the type itself as its expected type; the "child"
property is just the reverse of the parent. Take a look at the properties
/location/location/contains and /location/location/containedby for the
classic Freebase example of this. So we don't need to worry about which
topic should have which type, since there is only one type, and we don't
need to worry about how deep to model it, either.

Your point about how to effectively query the chain is a good one, but it's
a recurring pattern in Freebase, so it seems to be a problem we're willing
to bite off.

If it's meant to hold only the highest-level forms (which would be
legitimate, I think), what type, if any, should we give to artforms like
bas-relief? It's not a visual art genre (described as "Art Genre pertains to
the subject of the artwork. Examples of art genre: portrait, landscape,
still life, abstract art.) I also noticed that "fashion photography" is
currently a "visual art form"; should this be an art genre instead?

Jeff Prucher


> -----Original Message-----
> From: data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com 
> [mailto:data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com] On Behalf Of Faye Li
> Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 2:50 PM
> To: Freebase data modeling mailing list
> Subject: Re: [Data-modeling] Visual Art Form - an enumerated type?
> 
> The "Visual Art Form" type was designed with the intention of 
> holding only high-level art forms, of which there are only a 
> handful -- thus the enumeration designation. However, people 
> apparently desire specificity when talking about art forms. 
> One of the lessons in data modeling is that schema needs to 
> grow and adapt to fit the data, not the other way around, so 
> perhaps it's time we re-examine the "Visual Art Form" type.
> 
> In general, I have to say, I'm cautious regarding creating 
> hierarchical data models where the line between hierarchies 
> may be blurred at times. 
> I've seen things with genres and sub genres and the same data 
> often end up in both buckets. The hierarchy also creates 
> problems in reverse properties. Should the expected type be 
> the parent type ("genre") or the child type ("sub genre"), or 
> some third type created just to include both of them?
> 
> Also contributing to the confusion of data belonging to 
> parent/child types is that there is no automatic propagation, 
> by which I mean if we want to designate Topic C as a sub 
> category of Topic B, even though Topic B is already marked as 
> a sub category of Topic A, Topic C is not automatically added 
> as a sub category of Topic A, even though the relationship is 
> clearly transitive. The data can get messy really quickly.
> 
> -- Faye
> 
> 
> Jeff Prucher wrote:
> > That's a good question. It seems like the art form type is pretty 
> > broad; i.e., it includes not only sculpture but also relief and 
> > bas-relief. I thought at first that this type was only used for the 
> > very high-level artform (e.g., sculpture, painting, photogrpahy, 
> > etc.), in which case an enumeration would make more sense 
> -- there are 
> > probably only a couple dozen or so such options.  But since 
> the type 
> > really does seem to include varying levels of specificity, I'd be 
> > inclined to say that it shouldn't be an enumeration, either.
> >
> > This also raises the question of whether this type needs a 
> phylogeny 
> > pattern. I.e., a pair of parent/child or superclass/subclass 
> > properties.  So we could say that "bas-relief" is a variety of 
> > "relief" which is itself a variety of "sculpture".
> >
> > Jeff Prucher
> >
> >   
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com
> >> [mailto:data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com] On Behalf Of 
> Bobby Rullo
> >> Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 6:22 PM
> >> To: Freebase data modeling mailing list
> >> Subject: [Data-modeling] Visual Art Form - an enumerated type?
> >>
> >> Should Visual Art Form be an enumeration? The client doesn't allow 
> >> you to add types which are enumerations when you click 
> "Add a Type", 
> >> and this seems like something that changes relatively frequently.
> >>
> >> Bobby
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> >>
> >>     
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