[geolang-comment] FW: TC geoLang

["Bandholtz, Thomas" <thomas.bandholtz@koeln.sema.slb.com>]

Title: FW: TC geoLang

Lars asked me to post this.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bandholtz, Thomas
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2002 4:49 PM
To: 'larsga@ontopia.net'
Subject: TC geoLang

According to the call for participation I hereby notify you, as the TC
chair, of my intent to participate.

I joined OASIS today as an individual member(order Nr. 3569531096).

However, I cannot attend the first meeting in Seattle physically - I live in Germany and I cannot arrange to come to US at that date.

I will attend XMLEurope 2002 (as a speaker) looking forward to meeting and cooperating.

Personal Topic Map History
I came across Topic Maps in 1999 while I was working on the German Environmental Information Network. We used a legacy Thesaurus (the German source of GEMET), a Gazetteer,  and a Chronology to classify environmental information, and the Topic Map vision was very close to our objectives.

We had developed GEIN in 1999 using XML anywhere. So I was thinking about a XML Topic Map right from the beginning.  I was somehow disappointed when I read XTM 1.0, as I would have preferred a XML Schema with closer definitions using complex data types, inheritance, and extensibility on the schema (not the data) level.

I started to experiment with a schema based XML Topic Map Engine in late 2000, using GEIN as the main use case, but trying to be open to many others.

Current Work
Today I am PM of an R&D project that "converts" the GEIN taxonomy into a Topic Map.
We store and process this Topic Map using KnowledgeTaxi, the (almost) grown-up results of our early TM-engine experiments.

We re-write the auto-classification feature to utilize the Topic Map benefits.
We implement Web Services giving access to the engine via simple internet connections.
I will present this work at XMLEurope 2002 (same track with Kal Ahmed, Steven R. Newcomb, and Michel Biezunksi).

About publishing subjects
I see a gap between the "Recommendations for published subjects documentation" (Bernard Vatant) and solely building XTM-Topic Maps for PS.  Shall these TM contain "published subjects documentation sets" (Bernard) or should there be a different - or even free - format for the documentation? Any kind of UDDI-like registry for them?

About Geography & Location PS
One of the greatest challenges of my project work today is to transform the GEIN  national gazetteer into a Topic Map where each Topic is a published subject itself, or it references a subject published somewhere else.  These are some 50.000 Topics, so it will be hard to keep track for each of them.

In the context of another project I have an observer status in the Open GIS Consortium (OGC) Web Services Initiative. OGC knows  a "Services Registry" concept that grants lots of freedom to all service providers, providing them with a communication protocol to describe their services  (Web Services and XML Schema based). I know ebXML is moving to Web Services as well, after having adopted SOAP last year.

A Technical Committee should concentrate on the protocols and the publishing process, less on the selection of the final content to be published.  Remember that "In the most generic sense, a subject is anything whatsoever, regardless of whether it exists or has any other specific characteristics, about which anything whatsoever may be asserted by any means whatsoever." (ISO 13250). IMO any of these whatsoever subjects may get published. The question to be answered by the TC is: how?

I would prefer UN Location Codes as a first use case - simple but not too simple. On the other hand,  there are some Global Gazetteers on-line that provide much of what Bernard proposes as PS documentation set. One of these may be the source of a first complete working sample.

My Company
I dropped into the Topic Map universe as an employee of Sema Group, which re-branded as Sema in 2001 and was acquired by Schlumberger one month later. Now my company is SchlumbergerSema, being part of Schlumberger (www.slb.com).

Within SchlumbergerSema I am Executive Manager of the XML Competence Center (XMLcc) in Cologne, Germany.
Schlumberger has a strong attention to Knowledge Management. The company's engagement in the activities that are subject of this posting is under discussion.  This is an individual statement, but as this it conforms with my company's strategy. 

Thomas Bandholtz
XML Competence Center
SchlumbergerSema
Sema GmbH
Kaltenbornweg 3
D50679 Köln/Cologne
++49 (0)221 8299 264