Maiana August Release covers a number of new and exciting features in Maiana.
Among other things, you will find:
I assume they left something to do in September. 😉
Lars Heuer posts, Mappify Topic Maps to Topic Maps Web Service has added support for CTM 1.0!
According to Lars:
Mappify can convert CTM sources into JTM 1.0, XTM 2.1 and even into CTM 1.0 🙂
That last one, CTM to CTM, would that be like comparing your chess moves with those of a computer faced with the same situation?
TM/JSON is a work in progress by Robert Cerny.
According to Robert:
The main idea is to have an object representation of a topic map in any programming language that supports JSON without writing or generating mapping code and still being able to access the information with little to no knowledge of Topic Maps.
TM/JSON first draft
Code written with no understanding of the inputs seems problematic to me. (The mother’s programming job in Snow Crash?)
TM/JSON does not appear to require ignorance of topic maps so perhaps programmers knowledgeable about topic maps will find it useful as well.
We all need to give it a close read and Robert the benefit of some feedback.
CXTM-tests 0.3 has been released!
Oh, I guess I had better say what that means. 😉 Or, better yet, let that silver-tongued devil Lars Heuer say it for me:
It is a suite of tests for Topic Maps implementations, based around the various Topic Maps syntaxes. The intention is to help developers of Topic Maps implementations verify that their implementations are actually correct according to the specifications.
Each test consists of (at least) one input file with a corresponding CXTM file. If a Topic Maps implementation works correctly, it has to generate the same canonical output as specified by the reference CXTM file.
Or see his post, ANN: CXTM tests 0.3 released
Mappify Topic Maps to Topic Maps web service is an awkwardly titled but interesting announcement from Lars Heuer.
From his post:
I added a web service to Mappify which translates different Topic Maps syntaxes to XTM 2.1, CTM 1.0 and JTM 1.0 (reasons for this limitation can be found in [1]).
Supported input formats:
* JSON Topic Maps (JTM) 1.0
* Linear Topic Maps (LTM) 1.3
* XML Topic Maps 1.0, 2.0, 2.1
* TM/XML Topic Maps 1.0, 1.1
See his post for the full details.
As a community, not to pick on Lars, we need to find better titles for our papers/posts, etc. Take this post for example, why not: “Crossdressing Topic Maps, A Web Service.”? I think that would get a lot more hits than its present title.
TMAPIX I/O 0.4.0 (snapshot) has been released by Lars Heuer.
From the announcement:
TMAPIX I/O provides readers for nearly all known Topic Maps syntaxes and supports RDF as well. Further it writes TM/XML, XTM 1.0, XTM 2.0, XTM 2.1, LTM 1.3 and JTM 1.0.
TMAPIX I/O is compatible to all Topic Maps engines which implement the TMAPI interfaces.
A few CTM-related “bugs” will be fixed before the official release of TMAPIX I/O 0.4.0 later this year. A bit formal to have official pre-1.0 releases. But, for Lars I will buy the party hats. 😉
Topic Map Snippets posted Nexxor offers fixed-price Topic Maps startup package. Startup packages and specials sound like good signs for topic maps!
Federated Stream Processing Support for Real-Time Business Intelligence Applications by Irina Botan, Younggoo Cho, Roozbeh Derakhshan, Nihal Dindar, Laura Haas, Kihong Kim, and Nesime Tatbul, argues realtime BI has two critical requirements:
Topic maps enable you to (reliably) endow subjects in streams with rich contextual data that is directly actionable — across streams. (Not to mention that it will remain re-usable when your current IT department turns over.)
Selling topic maps means casting them in terms of fixing issues of interest to customers.
I think this is another opportunity that awaits some clever topic map company.
Wandora – Sneak Preview offers support for converting MARCXML into a topic map. This link will go away when the official Wandora release supports this feature.
Aki Kivelä’s posted details at: [topicmapmail] MARCXML to Topic Maps implementation!
Aki also created an example if you don’t want to install Wandora to see this feature: Example MARCXML to topic map conversion.
As Aki would be the first to admit, this isn’t a finished solution. It is an important step on the way towards one possible solution.
Another important step is for members of this list t0 use, evaluate, test the software and give constructive feedback. Can be negative but try to offer a solution for any problem you uncover.
Learning from the Web will be five (5) years old this coming December.
Alan Bosworth (then VP of Engineering at Google) outlines eight (8) lessons from the Web.
In brief:
You will need to read the article to get the full flavor of the lessons.
His comments on how databases have failed to heed almost all the lessons of the web is interesting in light of the recent surge of NoSQL projects.
After you read the article, ask yourself how topic maps has or has not heeded the lessons of the web? If you think not, what would it take for topic maps to heed the lessons of the web?
MaJorToM 1.0.0 (news release), “is a lightweight, merging and flexible Topic Maps engine satisfying different business use cases.” Now available for downloading (software, Google Code Project)!
The most important feature, of many, is that MaJorToM does not require underlying storage adhere to the TMDM data model. Think about that for a moment. How much of the world’s data is stored following the TMDM data model versus other data models? That’s what I thought too.
A more detailed review will follow but for now, download MaJorToM. Today!
PS: You can tell people that MaJorToM supports transactions, monitoring changes, chain of evidence on changes and cool stuff like modeling time and space.
Networked Planet has released a beta of Web3 Platform with free downloads during the beta period.
In addition to supporting RDF and Topic Maps, the platform also supports Sd-Share (think syndication and synchronization of multiple semantic stores).
I will have to rely on the reports of others on its installation and operation. I don’t have a Windows Server although this might tempt me into getting one.
The Topic Maps Lab is becoming a hotbed of topic map software development.
TMQL4J 2.6.3 was released this week with the following features:
New query factory – now it is possible to implement your own query types. If the query provides a transformation algorithm, it may be converted to a TMQL query and processed by the tmql4j engine.
- New language processing – the two core modules ( the lexical scanner and the parser ) were rewritten to become more flexible and stable. The lexical scanner provides new methods to register your own language tokens ( as language extension ) or your own non-canonical tokens.
- Default prefix – the engine provides the functionality of defining a default prefix in the context of the runtime. The prefix can be used without a specific pattern in the context of a query.
- New interfaces – the interfaces were reorganized to enable an intuitive usage and understanding of the engine itself.
Plus a plugin architecture with plugins for Tmql4Ontopia, TmqlDraft2010, and TopicMapModificationLanguage. See the announcement for the details.
See also TMQL4J Documentation and Tutorials.
Interested your experiences with the interfaces which “…enable an intuitive usage and understanding of the engine itself.”
Lars Heuer has released an online RDF to Topic Maps coversion web service!
Mappify – RDF to Topic Maps is the place!
No need for a topic maps engine or an RDF store. Streams RDF in and Topic Maps format out.
See his post for more details: ANN: Online RDF to Topic Maps Converter.
If you find this interesting, useful, etc., you can find contact information for Lars Heuer at: www.semagia.com
ULISSE (USOCs KnowLedge Integration and dissemination for Space Science and Exploration) is a research project to…
describe space experiments and their results using Topic Maps. This allows us to create a knowledge base with innovative navigation, filtering and querying capabilities for the project. We chose Ontopia as the topic maps engine to power this knowledge base.
While designing the overall ULISSE system, we identified the need for a RESTful web interface to Ontopia. Currently, we have been designing this interface internally and plan to start implementing it during the summer at which point we will also make it available as open source under the same license as Ontopia and hopefully/ideally as a part of Ontopia.
We approached the design of this REST interface as a generic interface for accessing a topic maps engine and it is not Ontopia- or ULISSE-specific. It could conceivably be implemented over any Topic Maps engine. (David Damen, 2 June 2010, Time to put Topic Maps to REST?)
Further details are available as a Google doc, http://bit.ly/9NEP2x.
You might also want to consider subscribing to TopicMapMail to follow this and other topic map related discussions.
******
Update: 3 June 2010
I was reminded of Robert Barta’s 2005 presentation at Extreme Markup, TMIP, A RESTful Topic Maps Interaction Protocol, Extreme Conference archive copy. Includes performance analysis.
And Robert points to the specification TMIP, Topic Map Interaction Protocol 0.3, Specification.
Robert Barta forwarded a link to Protovis: A Graphical Approach to Visualization.
Protovis composes custom views of data with simple marks such as bars and dots. Unlike low-level graphics libraries that quickly become tedious for visualization, Protovis defines marks through dynamic properties that encode data, allowing inheritance, scales and layouts to simplify construction.
Protovis (Javascript + SVG) + topicmap backend + your imagination = The Next Big Thing In Topic Maps?
Examples include maps and a number of other starting points for visualization of data sets.
Topic Maps Snippets reports that Robert Cerny’s Topincs 4.3.0 has been released!
QuaaxTM Topic Map Engine version 0.51 has been released.
Small topic map engine written in PHP5. Uses MySQL with InnoDB enabled for storage.
Author: Johannes Schmidt
Have you read: Hypermedia exploration with interactive dynamic maps by Mountaz Zizi and Michel Beaudouin-Lafon?
They define “interactive dynamic maps (IDMs),” which consist of:
topic maps, which provide visual abstractions of the semantic content of a web of documents and document maps, which provide visual abstractions of subsets of documents. (emphasis in original)
The authors speak of creating a thesaurus, user control over query expansion, using queries to create new maps, treating maps as documents, sharing maps among users, etc. Plus have screen shots of working software, SHADOCS.
The authors do not cite ISO 13250. The year? 1995 ISO/IEC 13250 became an ISO standard in 1999.
They don’t have roles and role players, etc., nor an explicit notion of subject identity, but where are we with regard to user control over query expansion for example? Or creating new maps with queries? (Was that possible with Robert Barta’s last draft for TMQL?)
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to re-invent it, maybe. (apologies to Santayana)
The success of topic maps depends upon having interfaces people will want to use.
Let’s request a one-day workshop on usability prior to TMRA 2010.
An overview of usability studies, techniques and literature. Might be a push in the right direction.
Perhaps a usability (HCI – human-computer interaction) track for TMRA 2011?
With case studies from topic map projects and usability researchers.
Impatient? See: HCI Bibliography : Human-Computer Interaction Resources, a collection of over 57,000 documents, plus recommended readings, link collections, etc.
As I was posting a blog entry for today, I thought about how blogging swept around the web. Unlike RDF and topic maps.
One difference between blogging and topic maps is that I can type a blog entry and post it.
I have an immediate feeling of accomplishment (whether I have accomplished anything or not).
And, what I have authored is immediately available for me and others to use.
Contrast that with the “hold your left foot in your right hand behind your back with your left eye closed, squinting through an inverted coke bottle while humming Zarathustra” theoretical discussions. (I am a co-author of the reference model so I think I am entitled.)
Or the “developers know best” cult that has shaped discussions to match the oddities and priorities of a developer view of the world.
An emphasis on giving users an immediate sense of accomplishment, with results they can use immediately could lead to a different adoption curve for topic maps.
Neither the theoretical nor developer perspectives on topic maps have had that emphasis.
When I posted the note about Marti Heart’s new book, Search User Interfaces, in Interfaces and Topic Maps I was thinking about it being relevant for software interfaces to topic maps.
After stewing on it for several days and a close read of Chapter 1, I think it has broader application for topic maps.
Topic maps present information about subjects using a single representative for each subject. And those representatives can record properties and associations entered using different identifications.
That sounds like an interface to me. It presents all the considerations of any “interface” in the usual sense of the word. Does it match the intended user’s understanding of the domain? Is the information of interest to the user? Does it help/hinder the user making use of the information?
The Hearst volume is relevant to topic mappers for two reasons:
First, in the conventional sense of the “user interface” to software.
Second, as a guide to exploring how users understand their worlds.
Both are important to keep in mind when constructing topic software as well as topic maps themselves.
Sharding the Neo4J Graph DB thesis bears watching.
As the size of topic maps increase, so will the performance demands made upon them.
Robert Cerny has released a new version of Topincs!
Supports domain modeling without programming!
Topincs – Video demonstration of new look/functions
Definitely worth a close look!
Yesterday I posted on spreading the gospel of topic maps. Then a note about Ken North’s Movement on the Big Data Front shows up in my inbox.
Coincidence? I don’t think so!
It isn’t difficult to imagine linked data with a useful notion of subject identity (as opposed to 303 overhead) and subjects with multiple aliases.
For topic mappers concerned with processing issues, that post led me to:
Sets, Data Models and Data Independence (Part 1)
Laying the Foundation (Part 2)
Information Density, Mathematical Identity, Set Stores and Big Data (Part 3)
Small data sets have subject identity issues. Big Data sets do too! Big Data needs Big Topic Maps!
I saw the Big Data in XML Daily Newslink. Wednesday, 14 April 2010 by Robin Cover. Definitely worth subscribing. newsletter-subscribe@xml.coverpages.org
Trond Pettersen’s posts on Web Application Development with Ontopia are a welcome relief from the initial presentation of topic maps that most of us have experienced.
While reading those posts it occurred to me that for public/static topic maps that a topic map engine might be overkill. If I am sent a fully merged topic map and all I want to do is display it, shouldn’t I be able to store it in an SQL backend, export it to XML and then use Cocoon as a framework for delivery?
I think creating, manipulating and navigating information represented in topic maps should be viewed as separate components in a work flow for topic maps. For example, postings in a blog (to shamelessly steal Trond’s example case), could result in XTM fragments with no topic map “processing” other than production of the fragments.
Another component, dare we say a “topic map engine,” might obtain those fragments from a feed and integrate those into a topic map that is periodically exported to yet another component (and possibly other destinations) for display or other uses.
All of those activities could be centralized in one piece of software, as it is with Ontopia or apparently with DC-X, to name an open source and commercial product.
But there are dangers in consolidated approaches.
One danger is being locked into a particular framework and its limitations.
Another is the potential damage to one’s imagination when every task revolves around one view of the data. Different operations are being performed to produce or upon the data. How it arrives at a common model should be left to the imaginations of developers.
A lot of very clever people are concerned with authoring, merging and delivery of topic maps. Viewing those as separate tasks may lead them to different places than when all roads start in one place.
I had someone tell me today that topic map software can’t be written without common model.
That came as news to me. All these years I had thought:
Now I find out that XML and SQL software isn’t possible without a common model.
But XML and SQL software exist and continues to be written.
I wonder what their authors know that the common model advocates don’t?
Powered by WordPress