Going back to this document, I confess that it's not at all clear to me what
distinction you are introducing with the archetype concept, either from a
software engineering point of view or mathematically. All of the examples of
archetypes sound like just run of the mill classes (and I suppose templates
would correspond to parametrized classes), so it's not really that clear what
the two levels in two-level modeling are. I can *speculate* and guess that,
say, SNOMED and LOINC are examples of controlled vocabularies, and I can
readily imagine a range of concepts that specialize or generalize one another,
but that's really a distinction of degree rather than a distinction of kind.
Thinking of examples from mathematics, the integers {0, 1, 2} under addition
modulo 3 form an example of a cyclic group, which is a kind of Abelian
(commutative) group, and that, in turn, is a kind of group. Those concepts
(cyclic group, Abelian group, group) represent progressively more abstract
concepts, but this distinction is not otherwise special. I could, on the other
hand, say that groups are example of algebraic structures (or that the group
concept is an example of an algebraic structure), and that algebraic structures
are to be distinguished, say, from geometric structures. Now, whether that's a
clearcut distinction is debatable (consider lattices or projective planes), but
it is one we make in practice. More to the point though, when I say that this
group is cyclic or Abelian, the adjective "cyclic" (resp. "Abelian") modifies a
particular group or set. On the other hand, when I say groups are examples of
algebraic structures, the adjective "algebraic" modifies
the concept of structure. This seems to be a genuinely different lind of
thing, and not just another instance of the same basic category.
===
Gregory Woodhouse
"Mathematics is the science of patterns."
--Lynn Arthur Steen, 1988
----- Original Message ----
From: Thomas Beale <[email protected]>
To: Openehr-Technical <openehr-technical at openehr.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 11:00:41 AM
Subject: Updated Architectural overview
The Architectural Overview document has been updated to include a better
explanation of how archetypes and templates work. See the home page
hotlinks section. The HTML view of the updated chapter is here -
http://svn.openehr.org/specification/BRANCHES/Release-1.1-candidate/publishing/html/architecture/overview/Output/archetyping.html#1135484
As usual, all comments and feedback are welcome.
- thomas beale
--
___________________________________________________________________________________
CTO Ocean Informatics (http://www.OceanInformatics.biz)
Research Fellow, University College London (http://www.chime.ucl.ac.uk)
Chair Architectural Review Board, openEHR (http://www.openEHR.org)
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