Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

January 13, 2011

Contra XTM?

Filed under: Topic Map Software,Topic Maps,XTM — Patrick Durusau @ 3:10 pm

I was reading a topic map paper that complained about difficulties processing XTM with XML tools.

In fact, the article says, you need a topic map engine to process XTM effectively.

Was that a surprise?

What if I ran across a SQL database dump with tables, which contain foreign keys, etc.

I would be bet that I need a SQL database engine to process it effectively.

Would that be a surprise?

XTM, is and was an interchange syntax for topic maps.

That means people can interchange XTM topic maps with the expectation of a defined set of semantics, for processing with, wait for it, a topic map engine.

I write this because I think XML is under-recognized as a declarative semantic format and too casually viewed as a basis for processing.

There are cases where XML can be used as a basis for processing, I don’t know, tweets for example. 😉

Seriously, a file being written in XML (think word processing formats), doesn’t automatically make XML tools the best processing choice.

XTM is one of those cases, but that wasn’t a surprise.

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