eCatalogue meeting 19/05/2022

Date: 19/05/2022
Participants: Cecile Guasch,Veit Jahns, Natalie Muric
Model editor: Eugeniu Costetchi
Note editor: Andreea Pasăre

Approximate publishing date for eCatalogue: July 2022

Discuss GH 340

As part of a description of an item in a catalogue, the relationship between items has to be described.
In epo-ecat:eCatalogueLine class we have the following modifications:

  • Changing epo:hasOrderableIndicator to epo:isOrderable

  • Changing epo:hasContractedItem to epo:isContractedItem

Added the following relationships on epo:Item class with their definitions:

  • epo-ecat:hasAccessoryItem “An additional item that can enhance the original item.

WG Approval: 19/05/2022”

  • epo-ecat:hasRequiredItem “An item that is needed by another item to ensure its functionality.
    Additional Information:
    The item is provided without other items that are required for proper functionality.
    For example, a printer cannot be used without ink cartridge; or a server cannot be used without its installation.

WG Approval: 19/05/2022”

  • epo-ecat:hasComponent “An item that is composed of another item.

Additional information:
The item is provided with its components. However, the component items may also be provided separately.
For example, a bicycle has wheels as components, but they may be provided as spare parts as well.
This relation is useful to describe different package levels of an item or hierarchies of items.

WG Approval: 19/05/2022”

  • dct:isReplacedBy “A related resource that supplants, displaces, or supersedes the described resource.

Additional information:

WG Approval: 19/05/2022”

  • dct:replaces “A related resource that is supplanted, displaced, or superseded by the described resource.

WG Approval: 19/05/2022”

  • epo-ecat:hasComplementaryItem “An item that if used with another item provides mutual enhancements to both of them.

Additional Information:
For example, gin and tonic; or smartphone and smartwatch.

WG Approval: 19/05/2022”

On reification of these relations:

  • These relations might be reified in the future if necessary.

  • Reification might be necessary because, for example, one sink might need one tap and other sinks might need two taps.

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Discuss GH 341

  • Items in a catalogue are described usually in a textual manner. But this allows only text searches for items. If a structured search for an item with a specific property is needed, such text searches produce a lot of noise. For instance, a search for printing paper, which can be used for a laser printer. A search result might also contain laser printers itself or classification systems like GPC or ECLASS provide a property system to describe items in a structured manner. For instance, GPC has the property (here called attribute) "20000924/Type of Paper/Card" with the defined value "30011357/LASER". This allows searches for all items which have the attribute 20000924, and only those are in the search result. Similar for ECLASS. For some of these values are provided, but in other cases free values can be provided. For instance, shirt sizes (XS, S, M, etc.).

  • The proposed implementation can be done but this will add ambiguity to the model and it should be avoided.

  • Some way (meta-modelling) of expressing an arbitrary property is needed:

    • code - attribute type - a Literal not a URI

    • classification of the attribute code (GPC, ECLASS, …​)

    • value as literal

    • value as reference

    • value a qualified amount

Actions Points

  1. Propose a way to reify the relations between items (GH 340)

  2. Propose a way of expressing an arbitrary property (GH 341)