first draft of a merge rule set

[Derek Atkins]

linas at linas.org (Linas Vepstas) writes:

>> 1) Is this semantically the same object?  For example, does this
>>    Account* and that Account* point to (semantically) the same
>>    "Account"?  
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by 'semantically' ...
> Are you comparing an account to something thats a not-account ??

Uh, no.  I mean two accounts that refer to the same, uh, account.  For
example, I have a shared checking account at BankOne.  In GnuCash I
refer to it as XXX.  BankOne refers to it a YYY.  My wife refers to it
as ZZZ in her accounting system (gnucash or otherwise).  XXX, YYY, and
ZZZ all refer to the same account.  That's what I mean by
"semantically".  Semantically they are all the same account, even
if syntactiacally they are referring to accounts, XXX, YYY, and ZZZ.

>> 2) Do these semantically equivalent objects have the same or
>>    different data in them? 
>
> I don't understand what your saying.  What's an example of 
> 'semantically equivalent objects' that would have different data?

Well, following from my example above, my wife and I both maintain
accounting trees to the same BankOne account, but I called it
"BankOne Checking" and my wife called it "Joint Checking".  It's
semantically the same account, but the description is different.
This is what I mean.

>>    This is more a question to determine
>>    if you have any work to do once you determine that you've got
>>    a duplicate in the import queue.
>
> I don't get this either.  If you've got two transactions that 
> are identical, you've got work to do.  If they are almost nearly
> identical, you've got exactly the same work to do.  Only if 
> they are significantly different do you have to stop and popup 
> a gui to ask the user.

Uh, no, if they are identical you have no work to do.  They are the
same, so you can ignore them.  If they are nearly identical or
significantly different then you have to pop up a gui.

> --linas

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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