Override equals in BasicKnowledgeAssetLIMSE (or in some superclass)

[RalphBln]

Checking two instances of BasicKnowledgeAssetLIMSE for equality is not possible at the moment (I'm not even sure what equality of two knowledge resources would actually mean. E.g., are two resources on different abstraction levels still equal if they represent the same thing?).

[greenTara]

The "LIMSE" part is implementation, so we need to decide this issue at the level of BasicKnowledgeAsset.

Case 1. Preserving Environment, not necessarily Focused
A BasicKnowledgeAsset in a preserving environment
is essentially an equivalence class, defined (in theory) by specifying an EquivalenceRelation and a prototypical BasicKnowledgeExpression member. Given two BasicKnowledgeAssets A and B, to be equal the following should hold:

• their environments are equal, which implies that their preserving EquivalenceRelations are equal
• every member of A is a member of B, which can be checked by applying the EquivalenceRelation to the two prototypical members

Case 2. Not a Preserving Environment, but is Focused
In this case a BasicKnowledgeAsset is not an equivalence class, it is just a set of expressions that can be generated by its environment. For equality in this case,

• their environments are equal,
• their canonical members (in the focus language) are equal.

If the asset is defined by a prototype rather than a canonical expression, then the prototype must be translated into the focus language.

Case 3. Neither Preserving or Focused

• their environments are equal
• their prototype members are equal

[greenTara]

In regard to your question, two KnowledgeResources must have the same abstraction level to be equal.