[topicmapmail] Stupid question---thanks

[Anthony B. Coates]

** Reply to message from "W. Eliot Kimber" <eliot@isogen.com> on Mon, 02 Sep
2002 09:47:38 -0500

> Of course, this is also an argument for which there is no absolute right
> or wrong--it's a matter of practice. But everything in my experience of
> designing information representation schemes suggests keeping
> metainformation clearly distinct from core content, so that's the
> approach I take. 

The problem that I have seen though, is that the question of "which is the core
content" is one for which the answer can change over time, and systems need to
be able to adjust to that.  The great success of relational databases is that
everything is a cell in a row in a table (or a combination thereof), so there is
no privileged status of some data to be metadata.  You just have data, and some
of that data plays the role of metadata at certain times in certain applications.

So, if a topic map application to provide long-lived usefulness of its data, it
also needs to avoid privileging certain data in a way that makes it hard to
change the view of what is the metadata.  It may be quick and convenient to add
snippets of complex XML to a topic map, but it could cause problems.  It won't
always cause problems - databases now contains snippets of HTML that are
assembled into pages, without necessarily hiding valuable information away from
new applications.

For long-term manageability, you probably need one of two things - (i) a
standard way of converting XML into a matching default set of topics (a bit like
the RDF view of unadorned XML), such that you can easily re-export the XML, or
(ii) a standard way of linking into complex XML in a topic map, one that allows
the XML information to take part in the normal associations.  Without one or
other, it will be hard to both support XML and manage the needs of long-term
information management.

	Cheers,
		Tony.
====
Anthony B. Coates, Information & Software Architect
mailto:abcoates@TheOffice.net
MDDL Editor (Market Data Definition Language)
http://www.mddl.org/