TopicMaps.Org Moves Development Efforts to OASIS

[Carol Geyer <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

TopicMaps.Org Moves Development Efforts to OASIS

ISO Standard for Navigating Information to Be Advanced by OASIS TCs

Boston, MA, USA; 2 October 2001 -- OASIS, the XML interoperability
consortium, added support for the XML Topics Maps (XTM) specification to
its technical agenda, as industry group, TopicMaps.Org, announced its
decision to continue development within the OASIS Technical Process. XTM
(ISO/IEC 13250:2000), which provides a model for organizing, retrieving
and navigating information resources, will be advanced by a series of
newly formed OASIS technical committees.

Topic maps provide a ‘knowledge layer’--independent of the information
resources themselves--to capture and manage corporate memory, improve
indexing and enable the integration of information that spans multiple,
disparate repositories. Applications include the semantic web,
distributed ontologies, business processes, workflow, search and
retrieval tools, knowledge management, diplomatic communication,
cultural dialogue and various other disciplines and functions.

"Topic maps help people find the information they need quickly and
easily. They serve, in effect, as a GPS for the Web," explained Charles
F. Goldfarb, the father of markup languages and inventor of SGML. "By
extending the power of XML to make information self-describing, topic
maps offer the potential to create a new generation of search engines."

"As XTM moves to becoming part of the ISO standard, OASIS is the logical
forum to advance its acceptance in the marketplace," said Eric Freese of
ISOGEN International, chair of TopicMaps.Org. "Participation and support
from the OASIS membership will help XTM realize its enormous potential
to improve the manageability of information."

Steven R. Newcomb, one of the three co-editors of the ISO Topic Maps
standard, agreed, "Topic Maps offers a simple and extraordinarily
scalable way to control 'infoglut' and amalgamate sets of
knowledge-bearing assertions from disparate sources. To derive maximum
benefit from Topic Maps, communities and industries should establish
sets of 'published subjects' and other best practices.  The combination
of the OASIS technical development process and the vision and dedication
of the TopicMaps.Org contributors should yield good results for
participating communities and industries--and everyone else, too."
To advance XTM, the OASIS Topic Maps Published Subjects Technical
Committee has been formed, and the consortium expects to announce
additional OASIS topic maps technical committees over the next 30 days.

"Many current OASIS technical committees advance development work that
began outside the Consortium," said Karl Best, director of technical
operations at OASIS. "Increasingly, independent industry groups are
realizing the benefits of working within the open OASIS technical
process, where they gain access to OASIS infrastructure, resources and
expertise. OASIS broadens participation and lets groups focus on their
technical work, rather than the administrative details of running a
member association. Topic Maps is an exciting addition to the OASIS
technical agenda."

Organizations contributing to the OASIS Topic Maps Technical Committees
include Boeing, DataChannel, empolis, Reuters, Sun Microsystems and
other OASIS Contributors and Individual members. Information on joining
OASIS can be found on http://www.oasis-open.org/join.

OASIS will host an open mail list,
topicmaps-comment@lists.oasis-open.org, for public comment on XTM.
Completed work will be freely available to the public without licensing
or other fees.

About OASIS
OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org) is the international, not-for-profit
consortium that advances electronic business by promoting open,
collaborative development of interoperability specifications. With the
United Nations, OASIS sponsors ebXML, a global framework for electronic
business data exchange. OASIS operates XML.ORG, the non-commercial
portal that delivers information on the use of XML in industry. The
XML.ORG Registry provides an open community clearinghouse for
distributing and locating XML application schemas, vocabularies and
related documents. OASIS serves as the home for industry groups
interested in developing XML specifications. OASIS technical work
embraces conformance, security, business transactions, repositories and
other interoperability issues.

For more information:
Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209