Re: Topic Maps: Backend Plugin for TM4J

From: Andriy Shapochka (ashapochk..otmail.com)
Date: Wed Sep 01 2004 - 10:58:24 EDT

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    * Mondeca (www.mondeca.com) has developed systems holding the equivalent
    of several hundred thousand records.
    * A Topic Maps system is used at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; it's part of
    a system to assist officers in applying security classification rules to
    documents,
    which can be extremely complicated. The topic map holds the rules
    and documents, and an inference engine applies the rules to the data in
    the topic map.
    * The U.S. Internal Revenue Service released a CD containing all of the
    year's tax regulations and forms. It was indexed with a topic map.
    * Starbase Corporation, now part of Borland International, created a system
    that integrates several separate databases by adding a software layer that
    makes them look like topic maps (Seidl 2001). The virtual topic map is
    available over the company's network. This application of Topic Maps
    starts to approach the vision of linking and navigating a range of different
    resources distributed over a network.
    * LexisNexis, which maintains an enormous online reference collection for
    subscribers, has developed a prototype topic map system that makes it easier
    for a person to locate information of interest (Freese 2003). Note that
    this system doesn't store the main data in the topic map. Instead, the topic
    map contains meta data that can be used to identify and find information
    in the main data stores.
    * The U.S. Social Security Administration has developed a content-management
    system for policy-related documents that's accessed using an enterprisewide
    topic map (Degler and Battle 2003), using earlier work that collected
    references to a vast amount of Medicare information for legal users. The
    original impetus was a need to handle complex medical appeals cases
    more quickly. The system allows document owners to index documents
    using common topics related to agency processes and terminology. Policy
    subject experts add and maintain all the keywords in the topic map without
    having to rely on specialist technical staff. This helps to keep the topics
    familiar to people seeking content, and improves end users' ability to find
    complex, interrelated content.

    Here is some more info about companies and orgs working with Topic Maps.

    Extensive case studies of successful Topic Map applications (IRS docs among
    those):
    http://www.techquila.com/bcase.html

    Some company sites where they develop with TM:
    * empolis: http://www.empolis.co.uk/
    * Infoloom: http://www.infoloom.com/
    * Mondeca: http://www.mondeca.com
    * Ontopia: http://www.ontopia.net/

    Good online showcase of TM, CIA Factbook as TM and the rest of it
    http://www.ontopia.net/omnigator/models/index.jsp

    News and info on the current state of affairs in the TM world
    http://www.topicmap.com/

    Small case study of using TM with RDBMS
    http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/03/05/tmrdb.html

    In fact TM is roughly equivalent to RDF and both of those technologies deal
    with Knowledge Management and ontologies
    (http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/index.htm - very good book on the ontology
    theory) (OWL builds on top of RDF). They provide flexible means to define
    your domain model in a standartized way and make it real well adjustable to
    changes in requirements, etc. Also they perfectly suitable for application
    of logical inference systems. So TM is much more than just an indexing
    mechanizm, people do the entire sites, content management and information
    storage apps, etc. Well, everybody knows of RDF, so TM works on the same
    grounds, just easier to use.

    Topic maps are fundamentally about linking concepts to information about
    those concepts, with the goals of promoting collocation and navigation of
    the
    information-finding the right information and finding all related
    information
    nearby. Topic maps are based on the idea of concepts-anything that can be
    discussed
    or thought about. A topic is a computer representation of a concept.
    Concepts
    are significant because of their relationships to other concepts. To model
    this, topics can be related to other topics by means of associations. They
    can also
    contain or point to other relevant information, using the occurrence
    structure
    for this purpose.
    Subject identity is one of the key ideas of topic maps. The subject of a
    topic
    map means the concept it refers to. The identity can be established in
    several
    ways. One is by specifying a publicly published identifier (a PSI), which
    contains
    a human-readable description of the subject, and possibly machine-readable
    meta data as well. Another way is to point to a resource, such as a web
    page, and
    say that the resource "indicates" the subject. A third way is to state that
    a given
    resource is the subject in question. In all cases, human judgment may be
    needed
    to determine exactly what the subject of a given topic is. These
    capabilities make
    topic maps unique in their ability to specify the nature of their subjects.
    Although they were originally designed to act as indexes into bodies of
    information,
    topic maps can store and organize data of all kinds. Their origin as
    indexing systems is reflected in a tendency for topic map developers to use
    topic
    maps as overlays to existing information rather than as primary databases.

    Well, that was a kind of resume on the subject, some interesting and useful
    stuff to know and think about.

    Andriy.

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Andrus Adamchik" <andru..bjectstyle.org>
    To: "Cayenne Devel" <cayenne-deve..bjectstyle.org>
    Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 1:59 AM
    Subject: Re: Topic Maps: Backend Plugin for TM4J

    > Hi Andriy,
    >
    > That's some pretty cool stuff. With both Microsoft and Apple making
    > document search functionality the core of their upcoming OS releases
    > (Longhorn and Tiger), and at least Apple focusing on document metadata
    > indexing, I can see how such technologies can become big in the coming
    > years. I wonder how many people/companies already use Topic Maps and
    > TM4J? And what exactly this is used for other than book index creation?
    > As unlike other search technologies, topic map creation seems like a
    > very involved non-automated process... Also there is lots of developers
    > on the project, but not too many downloads...
    >
    > Andrus



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