RE: [topicmaps-comment] referring to a topic from outside a TM

["Bandholtz, Thomas" <thomas.bandholtz@koeln.sema.slb.com>]

Title: RE: [topicmaps-comment] referring to a topic from outside a TM

> -----Original Message-----

> From: H. Holger Rath

> The ISO topic maps committee SC34 WG3 talked about this issue
> last August  and identified it as very important issue to make "global knowledge
> interchange" work with topic maps. We named it the "Topic Map
> Addressing Scheme (TOMAS)", which could be based on a special URN scheme. But we
> have not discussed it in detail because other things have to  be finalized
> before (e.g., data model).
>
> We know that TOMAS is *really* necessary and that it is not a  trivial thing.
> But we will address it.

I think we should *start* to discuss it now  - just collecting some opinions ...

mine:

I would not think about a special URN  scheme first. URNs are only names (ok, globally uniq names, hopefully). We need an  addressing method that can provide on-line access to the addressed node.

Today most of us use URL with *fragment identifiers* (which is not widely implemented for XML) and not *queries* (using ? in an URI), so they are tied to documents.

 
I would take a look at Webservices (nothing "special", but  generally designed for a usage like ours).
They are not restricted to any 1 protocol, but they can be bound to any of them, like E-Mail, HTTP GET, SOAP, or whatsoever.

This gives you a free choise to select the technical architecture of your service .... (some of us who are taxonomists will have to *respond* to an Addressing Scheme instance some day :-) )

 
Another view:
"global knowledge interchange" will not be implemented by merging files or using file-based linking methods.
I can only imagine a future for TM when they can be maintained in databases without needing a physical file representation. Linking and merging should just be "virtual" by processing the relations dynamically, using web interfaces. 

Any Addressing Scheme must support dynamic access to database servers (i.e. via Webservices).

The PSI activities today are dominated by file-oriented thinking. I think this is very risky.

Thomas Bandholtz
XML Competence Center
SchlumbergerSema
Sema GmbH
Kaltenbornweg 3
D50679 Köln/Cologne
++49 (0)221 8299 264