RE: [uddi-spec-comment] W3C XML Schema for XTM DTD (Needed for UDDIefforts?)

[Matthew Dovey <matthew.dovey@las.ox.ac.uk>]

> *Max Voskob
> During the last UDDI meeting we discussed an option of using external 
> representation of taxonomies (it's a UDDI thing) and someone 
> suggested to 
> look into XTM. 

Yes, I suggested that we needed to consider TopicMaps and also the W3C
Semantic Web work. I also promise to send a few pointers to the mail
list so...

In the semantic web arena the emphasis is on a Web Ontology Language
(OWL), see the references at http://www.w3c.org/2001/sw/#activity.
Taxonomies are viewed (if I understand correctly) as a simple form of
ontology so OWL goes way beyond what we would require (at least
initially).

There's also discussion within the semantic web activities on using OWL
and semantic web for service description and discovery (there was a
paper on this at the EuroWeb 2002 conference but I haven't found an
online copy yet).

TopicMaps can be found at http://www.topicmaps.org (I missed the s in
the url I gave during the teleconference).

And a comparison at
http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tmrdfoildaml.html

My own view is UDDI we should work with external standards rather than
invent our own. One issue is that there isn't one standard so we may
need a mechanism for working with arbitrary standards and I feel that
the tModel mechanism could be used in this context.

Another issue is whether a static XML feed is really the best way of
addressing the issue that Max raised. This may not be applicable for
larger or more dynamic taxonomies. As such UDDI may need to work with an
taxonomy navigation API (which if a web service could be denoted by a
tModel itself - so an taxonomy navigation service might have the
signature of a generic tModel for Taxonomy navigation plus tModel for
the specific API used - since it is unlikely that there will be one
standard API).

I'll work with Max off-list to see if these ideas can and should be
incorporated into his proposal.

Matthew