AW: [xtm-wg] The Future of TopicMaps.Org

["Dr. Heiko Beier" <heiko.beier@moresophy.de>]

Hello Steve,

being from one of the companies "lurking" and casually contributing to this
group, I welcome your encouragement and like to give an "outsider's view"
on the future to TopicMaps.Org (and also the XTM standard itself).

IMO TopicMaps.org has done an excellent and highly necessary job in a quick
XML implementation of the ISO 13250 standard. The task was performed by
individuals and some companies with a high overlap in their interest: giving
topic maps a standardized XML-based interchange format as a key prerequisite
for pushing its market spread. The time pressure the group has put itself
under has obviously led to some flaws in the specification, which IMO can be
excused and are well outbalanced by having achieved the highest aim: the
release of the XTM standard in a short time. Unfortunately, with the release
of the spec, people which have previously been working together with a
common goal in mind (pushing out the XTM standard) are now beginning to
disperse and object in their intentions and plans for both the standard
itself and the way to proceed from here on. However, this is in no way
surprising. With the release of the XTM standard the basis for commercial
"exploitation" of the topic map paradigm has been laid and gaps become
visible. Some people are advocating saving the soundness of the
standard and its high abstract power, while on the other hand others see a
definite need for further extension of the standard, even down to the DTD
level.

As a consequence from these observations I would highly favour two
suggestions, which have been made in this group:

1) The further development of the XTM standard should be hosted by OASIS.
The mission of OASIS is a perfect match to the XTM standard. The
professional environment given by OASIS will not only help "getting people
and interests together again", but will definitely also have substantial
benefit for marketing XTM. The reputation of the organisation, its large
numbers of members and its wide range of affiliations with other
standardization bodies will give XTM a forum which it will be unlikely to
achieve just by itself.
Our company is not yet a member of OASIS, but will definitely join the
organisation once TopicMaps.org has decided to move there. I hope and assume
that other companies would do so as well.

2) Conformance of work done in the XTM specification group must be monitored
not to object in any sense to the fundamental concept of topic maps as given
by the ISO 13250 standard. By fundamental I mean:
- the core "philosophical" concepts like e.g. the relation between topics
and subjects, the idea of everything being a topic, the orthogonality of the
topic and occurrence layers and so on.
- the rules how to process a topic map! Note: this includes that the
TopicMap community MUST AGREE on a common processing model, and I think it
might be useful if the processing model would be standardized and published
as an ISO-standard.
Thus the foundations of TopicMaps are published and retained by ISO, while
all serialization and implementation issues are covered by
TopicMaps.org/OASIS.

I apologize for any misinterpretations or false assumptions, which will very
likely come from my outsider point of view. But I think, if TopicMaps are
going to succeed and compete well with other standards for the semantic web,
more and more outsiders will have to look at TopicMaps. And - like it or
not - their impression of the maturity of the standard and the
professionalism of the organisation behind it will ultimately decide about
the rise or fall of TopicMaps as a widespread technology for the semantic
web.

Regards, Heiko

------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Heiko Beier        -  CEO  -  moresophy GmbH
Brienner Str. 54b      -  80333 Munich
Tel: +49-89-523041-71  -  Fax: +49-89-523041-89
------------------------------------------------------------
         moresophy -> more sophy -> think meta
------------------------------------------------------------

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Steve Pepper [mailto:pepper@ontopia.net]
> Gesendet: Sonntag, 22. April 2001 13:53
> An: xtm-wg@yahoogroups.com
> Betreff: RE: [xtm-wg] The Future of TopicMaps.Org
>
>
[...]
>
> Nonsense! XTM is too important to be left to those that have had
> the opportunity to participate actively up to now. I encourage more
> of the lurkers on this list to express their opinions and help us
> make the right choice for the future of topic mapping.
>
[...]
>
> For the record, I don't see SC34 as being a really suitable
> *alternative* to OASIS, but rather a very interesting and
> important complement.
>
> Steve
>
> --
> Steve Pepper, Chief Technology Officer <pepper@ontopia.net>
> Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34/WG3  Editor, XTM (XML Topic Maps)
> Ontopia AS, Waldemar Thranes gt. 98, N-0175 Oslo, Norway.
> http://www.ontopia.net/ phone: +47-23233080 GSM: +47-90827246
>
>
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