Re: [topicmaps-comment] uml and topic maps

["W. Eliot Kimber" <eliot@isogen.com>]

Enrico Silterra wrote:
> 
> I know some work has been done on modelling XML schema
> and dtd's using UML.
> 
> Has anyone done any work modelling topic maps with
> UML?
> 
> At first glance, a topic map seems to correspond to
> some sort of object diagram - while a topic map
> schema seems to correspond to a class diagram.

There are two different issues here:

1. Modeling the abstract data model for topic maps using UML. 
2. Modeling topic map instances using UML.

The first is obviously possible and useful. A number of people have done
this, as Murry A. explains.

I tried doing the second and found it didn't really work--as Mr.
Silterra says, there's too much detail about topics and associations
that UML isn't really set up to express. I started by making each topic
a UML type and then using UML associations (direct relations) to express
topic associations, but that didn't really work--you have to instantiate
association roles as objects, which means you have to instantiate
associations as objects, etc. The diagram quickly got very cluttered and
the convenience of using a UML modelling tool was far outweighed by the
cumbersome nature of the resulting model.

Cheers,

E.



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