Meeting Notes - 08/01/1996

The followings items were discussed:

1. Error Codes: We decided that a handful of error codes are sufficient to keep the TSIMMIS user informed of what has gone wrong. Too many codes will be confusing. We also decided that we will have some sort of help file that will explain in detail what each of the error codes means, i.e., what could have caused the error.
   See error codes for an up-to-date list of all TSIMMIS error codes.
2. Filter predicates in engine: We decided on seven filter predicates that Ramana's engine will be able to support: lt, gt, le, ge, eq, ne, contains. In this way, we will be able to handle queries containing predicates that are not supported by the source, provided that they are on the above list.
   An example of this is BIBLIO which only supports on predicate at the time. By using the built-in filters at the engine we can ask queries such as "Return all documents with title X that were published before 1990".
3. Ramana will revisit his object fusion algorithm to see if he can remove duplicate objects from the answer. We will hear more about this next week...

Joachim Hammer