Case Study: Boeing Intelligent Graphics for Airplane Operations and Maintenance   Table of contents   Indexes   XML Conformance
 

XML and Topic Maps

 Biezunski, Michel 
 France 
Independent
 Paris 
 		Michel  Biezunski
Consultant,  Independent 
 1 boulevard du Temple
Paris  (France) 75003 
Email: mb@infoloom.com

Biographical notice

Michel Biezunski, Ph.D., is working as an independent consultant. He is actively involved in the creation of an information industry based on XML-related technologies. He participates to the standard development activity and serves as co-editor for ISO/IEC 13250, Topic Navigation Maps. Michel develops Topic Map applications, online help systems, and SGML/XML publishing applications.

 

Contents

 
  • Why Topic Maps?
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  • Topic Maps and Airline Travel
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  • Topic Maps explained
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    Why Topic Maps?

     

    Navigation Metaphors

     
  • Hierarchical file systems
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  • Full text search
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  • Metadata search
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  • Topic Maps
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    Improving search strategies

     
  • Need to combine navigation within structured and unstructured information sets.
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  • Structured: queries require knowing SGML/XML structure or database schema
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  • Unstructured: full-text often unsufficient, result not editable.
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    Generalized Metadata Schemas

     
  • Applicable even if metadata are not part of the information sources.
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  • Due to the fact that Topic Maps are overlays.
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    Opening the market for vocabularies

     
  • Lists of terms (products, objects, books, ...) exist.
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  • Some of them are maintained and have unique reference numbers. that can be used for future reference, inclusion, and navigation.
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  • Rather than starting from scratch, one may want to include (borrow, buy, reference, etc.) existing lists.
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  • These lists can be made part of topic maps, and stored as such.
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  • Alternatively, they can be considered "public topics" and used as references that will be understood by everyone who recognizes the source authority.
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    Navigation and Air Travel

     

    Introduction

     There is a parallel between air navigation and navigation within information. The decision of the airline companies to create navigation hubs to rationalize air traffic is compared with the proposal to organize navigation within online information centered on topics and describe with an international standard, called Topic Navigation Maps.
     

    Airline Connections Before Hubs

     
  • Before: From a city to another city, there were some flights.
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  • Almost never the right schedule, nor the right destination.
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  • Many planes were almost empty.
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  • Airline companies were opening / closing connections.
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    Airline Connections With Hubs

     
  • Connecting through a hub almost guarantees there will be a connecting flight.
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  • Connections between major hubs have been made convenient, and comfortable.
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  • When there is no connecting flight to final destination, go to another hub first.
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    Browsing Information Before Topics

     
  • Links start anywhere, go anywhere.
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  • There might be (or not) a link to the desired destination object.
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  • If there is a link, it might be broken (no destination).
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    Browsing Information With Topics

     
  • Connecting through topics enables consistent management of links (database-driven).
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  • A topic map maintains consistent lists of topics.
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  • Navigation betweeen topics is made explicit.
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  • Maintenance of a hyperdocument is made possible.
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    Topics are Information hubs

     
  • Topics are similar to Airports.
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  • To fly, you need first to go to an airport.
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  • To navigate information, you need first to go to a topic.
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  • Flights are like Associations between Topics.
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  • To navigate, you need to go through Topic Maps is a common language to express navigational strategies between objects.
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  • In Topic Maps, navigation is organized on semantics.
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    Topic Maps Explained

     

    Infoglut

    Links

     
  • Information is a mess.
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  • Very interesting/important/vital information can be hidden in a maze of useless information.
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  • Finding and retrieving relevant information is becoming an urgent and universal need.
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  • The information which has value is the one which has been optimized for retrieval.
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    Common Languages

     
  • XML is a common language to tag information objects.
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  • Topic Maps is a common language to express navigational strategies between objects.
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  • In Topic Maps, navigation is organized on semantics.
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  • Topic Maps are expressable in XML.
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    Topics

     
  • They are mandatory, as hubs.
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  • Once upon a time, planes became so big that airports became necessary.
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  • Soon enough, information networks will become so big that topics will prove necessary...
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    Occurrences

     
  • An occurrence of a topic is like a city served by an airport.
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  • An occurrence can be shared by multiple topics (i.e. connected to several airports). Example: Queens, New York is served by La Guardia and JFK.
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  • Occurrences can be divided by the roles they play in each topic. Equivalent for an airport: city, store, employee, hotel, etc.
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    Associations

     
  • Topics are connected to other topics through associations [like airports connected through flights].
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  • Semantics of the roles played by each anchor of the association is user-defined. (Example: Departs-from, Arrives-at.
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  • Associations can form trees, or graphs. In the airline example, hubs are nodes in the tree.
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    Topic Types

     
  • Topics can be distinguished by their class, called "Topic Type".
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  • Example: International Airport versus National Airport.
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    Topic Names

     A topic may have zero, one or several names
     
  • One name: usual case
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  • Zero name: "Upgraded" cross-reference, or HTML link, or XML simple link.
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  • Several names: Names can be either alternative ("art museum", "museum of art"), used within given scopes ("New York" is the usual name, "New York City" is the formal name, "Big Apple" is the colloquial name"). They can be defined within facets: Nueva York is the name of New York when applying the Spanish facet.
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    Names: full, display, sort

     
  • Full name: string containing the full expression of the name.
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  • Display name: string used to display the name. If empty, full name is used. Otherwise, may contain an abbreviation, or a disambiguated form of the name (e.g. "New York (City)", while full name would be "New York")
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  • Sort name: string used to alphabetically sort the name (e.g., NEWYORKCITY). If empty, full name is used as sort key.
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    Scopes

     
  • Scopes are used to limit the range of an assertion (assignment), i.e. this topic is related to that topic only in the scope of this.
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  • This name is assigned to this topic in this scope.
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  • Scopes themselves are topics, and as such, all rules applying on topics apply on scopes.
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    Facets

     
  • Objects can be assigned properties with a given set of values.
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  • They can be selected depending on a given value of a given property
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  • Facets can be used for:
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  • Multilingual documents
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  • Security
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  • Time validity
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  • User profile
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  • Semantic Universes
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  • Etc.
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