<br>Hi Tim, many thanks for your warm welcome.<br><br>I'm using "band" like we often use "space".. I got into "band" when focusing on web services design issues for tools (services), comparing the HTTP content-body (POST|PUT XML|JSON) with HTTP query-parameters (GET|POST url-encoded). As in "syntactic bands" where the HTTP query string has a very narrow band (little capacity for structure), and the content-body has a broad band capacity for structure. Makes for a quick analysis of tool (service) design issues.
<br><br>The debate here would be over a Property named "key", versus any Property having either Type Key or Attribute Key. <br><br>So this is my getting to know Freebase, bringing along concepts from file formats and relational databases. For one, the Freebase key has a different conception from a relational database key. It's a unique Property value, but plays a different role in a graph than a key in a table.
<br><br><br>Cheers,<br><br>John<br><br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 3/22/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Tim Sturge</b> <<a href="mailto:tsturge@metaweb.com">tsturge@metaweb.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Hi John,<br><br>Welcome to Freebase!<br><br>I agree that "key" and /type/key have special behaviour in MQL. They are<br>important and common enough to be optimized internally. Hopefully the<br>power they bring (the hierarchical path in an id like
<br>"/common/topic/article" or "/wikipedia/en/Anarchism") makes up for the<br>slight inconsistencies in syntax.<br><br>My belief is that most languages are stuck with inconsistencies in<br>various places and the best you can do is try to minimize the impact on
<br>the language user. Some very popular languages (Perl and SQL are two<br>good examples) have horribly inconsistent syntax, but are in common use<br>and considered "easy to use" while others (Lisp is the classic case)
<br>have a very small and consistent syntax but aren't used that commonly<br>and are considered "hard to learn".<br><br>I'm also curious as to what you mean by "out of band attributes of<br>properties". The closest thing I think MQL has to that is the "link"
<br>pseudo-property which enables you to examine the internal information of<br>a particular property instance (such as who created it and when they did<br>so.) This too is somewhat syntatically inconsistent (for example, "link"
<br>is not a property of any type.)<br><br>Thanks for your comments,<br><br>Tim<br><br>John Pritchard wrote:<br>><br>> Hi,<br>><br>> Skipping a personal introduction, I'll jump right into some first<br>> thoughts on a look into MetaWeb.
<br>><br>> I like it, but.. MetaWeb appears (to me) to be in need of some "out of<br>> band" "attributes of properties". This is usually where "type" would<br>> live, but is best illustrated in the MetaWeb case by "key". It seems
<br>> to me, in my humble opinion (ie, without much study), that the "key"<br>> thing is a bit messy.<br>><br>> Comments?<br>><br>><br>> Cheers all,<br>><br>> John<br>><br>><br>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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