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I have a database where various student musicians have their specialisms and departments listed (for example somebody could specialise in violin in the Historical Performance department). Also for example, consider Johann Sebastian Bach - he is a musician and composer in the Baroque style. Logically perhaps I'd want his specialism to fall under "Composition" and his department to be "Baroque".

I think that 'department' could be covered happily by the "category" property, but what to make of 'specialism'? That's a kind of category, too. The hCard spec says that it's cool to use 'category' twice, but it seems kind of dirty since department and specialism are so semantically unrelated.

What about the 'notes' property? Or 'role'? Thoughts?

hollsk
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  • I agree with Phae below. It is unfortunate, but hCard is not a one-format-fits all spec. Additionally, even if it did support this information fully, there are very few (if any) interpreters which could understand the information. As such, it's better to list the information in a human-readable way rather than to try to mark it up semantically. Search engines are designed to read data as if they were humans, anyway. – mattbasta Jul 26 '10 at 17:48
  • It's really more of an experiment in semantics than anything else - can we encapsulate most of this data within this paradigm, and if so, how. It is interesting to see how far this can be taken in what is a reasonably unusual use-case and I've been quite pleasantly surprised at how malleable it's been so far. Ultimately I want to get the people working on the same project to recognise that semantic relationships aren't solely for the application's database layer. – hollsk Jul 26 '10 at 18:33

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I think I'd be inclined to use the category for 'Composition' and 'Baroque' either into role or as part of his faculty address. I'm not entirely clear on whether 'Baroque' would be an addressable part of your school, but if that would be the case then that'd work. Maybe think about it in terms of how you would describe them - would Johann be a 'Composer of Baroque' (role) or a 'resident of Baroque department' (adr).

vCards aren't that super detailed, unfortunately.

Phae
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  • Hm, interesting it's not a residential school, so adr is out for the student contacts at least, but as far as I can see at the moment, role is the most interesting / likely possibility. I did think that 'class' would also be a good one but it turns out that's something to do with security, go figure ;-) – hollsk Jul 26 '10 at 18:25