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

[scott.tsao@boeing.com]

--- In xtm-wg@y..., scott.tsao@b... wrote:
> I am glad that the author (sort of) responded:
> http://www.xml.com/cs/user/view/cs_msg/110

In this first response by Eric:
> I see RDF and XTM as belonging to different levels, though and
> believe they should be more complementary than competing.
I agree whole-heartly with you here, and my attempt was trying to 
find out WHERE they could be more complementary.

> I believe that XTM could have used a RDF syntax, however since it
> is not the case with XTM 1.0 we have to make a choice and, I think
> that it depends on the application you want to build and the tools
> you want to use.
I am not sure about this.  I have also heard suggestions that RDF 
model should be serialized in terms of XLink (which XTM is based 
on).  My quess is that this might be a tool issue, i.e., whether 
tools are readily (and freely) available to process the serialized 
data stream.

> If your application is all about describing topics and relations
> between topics and resources you might want to use XTM and the
> tools that are available to build Topic Maps.
Agreed.  The nice and clean separation between the topic layer and 
resource layer is a "user-friendly mental model" that helps me to 
visualize in my mind how I would want to semantically organize my 
myriad resources.

> On the other hand, if you want to consolidate information between
> applications and, for example, link your site summary with
> annotations and conformance tests, the generic RDF model should be
> much easier to use since triples from different sources do merge
> automatically when you load them.
Since I am not familiar with the details of RDF, I might be ignorant 
here.  What do you mean "link your ..."?  Is this the same as the 
XLink model (I thought RDF does not use XLink)?  Also, you mentioned 
in various places the strength of RDF's "automatic and implicit 
merge" feature.  Can you give a simple example of this?  How would 
you compare it with the XTM merge feature (I believe it is part of 
the XTM Processing Model)?

> Developing new applications with XTM is of course possible (many
> papers have been published for instance to show how Topic Maps may
> be used to represent knowledge bases) but requires to put on "topic
> maps lenses" and to consider everything as Topic Map objects (i.e.
> topics, associations or occurrences) and that's not always very
> natural.
As a matter of fact (as I stated earlier) as an user I prefer to put 
on the "topic maps lenses" (feels very natural to me).  I can name a 
couple of applications that this type of lenses fit naturally:
- controlled vocabularies (e.g., thesauri)
- metadata registry (and repository)
- Bible studies (as pointedly elaborated by Patrick Durusau, see 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xtm-wg/message/2317)

> The border line I would personally draw is then very simple: if you
> need a Topic Map, then go for XTM, but if you want something more
> extensible, consider using RDF. And keep in mind that if you've
> taken care to include enough information, you will always be able
> to transform RDF into XTM or XTM into RDF.
As an implementor, I would hope that I will not have to pay the 
panelty for this transformation.  Also, I don't understand what you 
mean by "more extensible" if I use RDF.  Is it because the fact that 
more tools are available (especially those advocated by the W3C)?  
>From the semantic enrichment standpoint, I think XTM is more 
extensible.  We are probably talking about "extensibility" at two 
different levels, which we both agreed from the start.

Thanks,

Scott Tsao
The Boeing Company










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