Re: [xtm-wg] Re: An Approach to the Semantic Web

[Eric van der Vlist <vdv@dyomedea.com>]

Scott,

scott.tsao@boeing.com wrote:
> 
> --- In xtm-wg@y..., scott.tsao@b... wrote:
> > [...] I would hope the author could provide a sequel
> > to this article outlining the scenarios (or use cases) one could
> > follow when accessing his Semantic Web Site.
> 
> I am glad that the author (sort of) responded:
> http://www.xml.com/cs/user/view/cs_msg/110

Reading your summary, I realize that I haven't answered to your
requirement about uses cases from a user's perspective.

Starting from the most basic one, the use cases I see for XMLfr are:

A. Current

1) Site summary

When accessing a web site, users expect to see a hierarchical structure
similar to a disk directory with lists of pages per category.

This structure, on XMLfr, is expressed by a set of RSS channels.

This could have been done in XTM by defining specific topics (1 topic
per RSS channel).

2) Syndication

I assume that our users can benefit from finding the headlines of XMLfr
on news portals.

This is one of the main applications of RSS.

This could technically be done through a piece of topic map, but I am
not aware of any project in that direction.

3) Key words

When reading an article, users are often in need for more information on
the topics mentioned in the article.

On XMLfr, this is done using RSS and the taxonomy module. The Taxonomy
module provides an identifier for each topic and the association between
the topic and the articles.

This is similar to XTM's topics and occurrences.

In both cases, this can lead to lists of keywords and lists of resources
related to a keyword.

4) Discovery

When a user wants to start studying a new topic, he needs to find out
the definition of the topic, the resources related to this topic and the
links between topics.

On XMLfr, I have only a partial implementation of this, relying on RSS
and the taxonomy module: what is still lacking is a description of each
topic and the categorization of the relations between topics.

This could of course have been done through XTM.

4) Conclusion

One of the purposes of my article has been to show that the 4 use cases
I have currently implemented could have been done using either RDF/RSS
or XTM.

B. Extensions

1) Annotations

Feedback (like the one you've provided on XML.com) is important to
increase the value of a web site.

I plan to enhance the management of threading discussions (currently
done through the mailing lists) on XMLfr by using the RDF vocabulary
defined by the Annotea project [1].

RDF has the nice property that RDF documents are implicitly merged: by
loading annotations into the database with my RSS documents, I add new
properties to the resources defined in this documents.

2) Email archives

Mailing lists are another important assets of XMLfr. Currently displayed
using hypermail, they do not integrate very well in the dynamic
architecture of the site.

Storing them and their description using a RDF format such as XMTP [2]
would allow me to integrate them seamlessly into the architecture.

And, here again, the facts (triples) about messages would be merged with
the other information and be easily presented in a coherent and
synthetic way.

C. Conclusion

While I think that Topic Maps could be "serialized" as RDF and should be
seen as an application where RDF is a generic data model, I believe that
there are other applications that are easier to implement over straight
RDF and that if the Topic Maps were using a RDF syntax, the information
from all these applications would be much easier to consolidate.

I hope this is answering your question!

Eric

[1] http://www.w3.org/2001/Annotea/
[2] http://www.openhealth.org/xmtp/

> Scott Tsao
> The Boeing Company
-- 
See you in Berlin for XML Europe 2001:
     http://gca.org/attend/2001_conferences/europe_2001/tutorialsmon.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric van der Vlist       http://xmlfr.org            http://dyomedea.com
http://xsltunit.org      http://4xt.org           http://examplotron.org
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