Feature #2243
open
Persistent identifiers for transformed actors/artifacts etc.
Description
It would be very useful to be able to have persistent identifiers for things which have been transformed, so that searching for a specific thing will produce all its forms. I need to illustrate this with a concrete example:
In Paul the Deacon’s late eighth century historical text the History of the Lombards, he recounts the battle between the Langoabrds and the Gepids. during which:
E21:Actor“Alboin” kills E21:Actor”Cunimund”.
As such, Actor “Cunimund” now becomes E20:Human_Remains “Cunimund’s body”. As the system currently works, the activity where this happens both Cunimund and Cunimund’s body are added in to the database, but there is no way to express that oen becomes the other. they are both represented in the database as simply being present.
Actor“Alboin”, then decapitates Human_Remains“Cunimund’s Body” turning it into Human_Remains“Cunimund’s Head” and Human_Remains“Cunimunds Headless Body”. (Alboin then leaves the body on the battlefield and takes the head with him)
Here we have a straight transformation of one artifact (human remains) into another, but the E11:Modification event doesn’t seem to have the option to identify and link the start and end forms of the artifact/human remains.
Actor:“Alboin” then modifies Human_Remains“Cunimund’s Head” into an E22:Artefact“Drinking Cup”
Again, there doesn’T seem to be away to make it clear that E21:Actor:“Cunimund”, E20:Human_Remains “Cunimund’s Head” and E22:Artifact“Drinking Cup” are all different phases of the same person/object’s biography.
Being able to mark this clearly is not just useful ,but essential as without it key information will be lost. e.g:
Later at a feast, Actor “Alboin” forces his wife “Actor“Rosemunda” to drink a toast from Artifact“Drinking Cup”. But without the chain of modifications being integrated into the database, it will conceal the detail that Actor“Rosemunda” is also Actor “Cunimund”’s daughter.
Would it be possible to make some kind of (e.g.) “entity” entry, that can then have actors, artefacts, etc. linked as subordinate items to it?
Updated by Alexander Watzinger about 1 month ago
- Category set to CRM
- Status changed from New to Acknowledged
- Target version set to Wishlist
This sounds like an interesting idea and thank you for giving such a detailed and useful example to illustrate this.
The challenge, as far as I understand, is to enter data about transformed entities without losing their connection (if multiple entities would be needed like in this example).
Because this is a rather complex topic I moved it to the wishlist for now but also added it as a topic to discuss on the next developer meeting agenda: Meeting 2024-05-08.