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Re: [h5md-user] fields of observable group


From: Felix Höfling
Subject: Re: [h5md-user] fields of observable group
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:42:47 +0200
User-agent: Opera Mail/11.50 (Linux)

What do you think about the following rule?

"H5MD files shall use the singular form for identifiers of datasets or groups of datasets (like 'sample' and 'position'), and plural for groups that collect other groups (like 'trajectories')."

Felix


Am 29.08.2011, 13:37 Uhr, schrieb Pierre de Buyl
<address@hidden>:

Well, I mean here "several subgroups of the group trajectories" are a plural.
Else, I would have kept "trajectory" :-)

Pierre

Le 29 août 11 à 05:35, Felix Höfling a écrit :

I agree.

Of course, we've got used to 'trajectory' and this would be fine semantically as well if one thinks of a curve in the one big phase space. But for consistency, we should probably better think of individual (although not independent) trajectories of the subsystems (living in a reduced phase space each).

Felix


Am 29.08.2011, 10:09 Uhr, schrieb Pierre de Buyl <address@hidden>:

<---Schnitt--->
I'm still a bit unsure, whether singular or plural is nicer. This has been discussed in length before, e.g.,
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/338156/table-naming-dilemma-singular-vs-plural-names

A useful rule is mentioned there, which we might adopt for H5MD (and have done so already, I think):

In his book "SQL Programming Style," Joe Celko suggests that a collection (e.g. a table) should be named in the plural, while a scalar data element (e.g. a column) should be named in the singular.

That means a dataset is named in singular (e.g., 'sample'), while a group is named in plural (e.g., 'observables').

Another useful guideline may be this one:
http://justinsomnia.org/2003/04/essential-database-naming-conventions-and-style/

A coherent naming scheme would then be the following ? (with the capital S lowercased, indeed)
/observableS/energy/{sample,step,time}
/trajectorieS/colloid/position/{sample,step,time}

Pierre


-----------------------------------------------------------
Pierre de Buyl
Chemical Physics Theory Group - University of Toronto
Physique des Systèmes Complexes et Mécanique Statistique - Université Libre de Bruxelles
web: http://homepages.ulb.ac.be/~pdebuyl/
Tel: +1-416-946-0047
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