[Developers] MQL index property

[Alexander Marks]

I've thought about this too -- I think a property to represent order significance is a great idea. How about a new property hint at /freebase/property_hints/ordered?

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Flanagan" <david at davidflanagan.com>
To: "For discussions about MQL, Freebase API and apps built on Freebase" <developers at freebase.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 11:24:17 AM (GMT-0800) America/Los_Angeles
Subject: Re: [Developers] MQL index property

John Giannandrea wrote:

> Ordering is optional, and the schema doesnt tell you if it is in use.  
> index order can be added to any clause, so anything might be ordered.  
> Its just another kind of assertion, albeit an unusual one.
> 
> While you could add index:null, sort:index to every query, it only  
> makes sense to do so when you know you care and at least some of the  
> data is ordered.

So this is kind of a meta question, but how do I know when the data is 
ordered.  I assume that somewhere, someone will write some documentation 
saying that /music/album/track properties are (or should be) ordered, 
right?  (Oops, now that I've followed the link to 
http://freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000513b317, I see 
that this is in the documentation.  Sorry!)

It seems to me that it would be nice if there was an informative (as 
opposed to normative) property of /type/property to indicate that there 
is like to be an ordering on that property.

	David

> In general most data is unordered and asking for things sorted is more  
> expensive.  So it very much depends on the data set.
> 
> -jg
> 
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