[topicmapmail] Survey of Actual Scope Use in Topic Maps

[Marc de Graauw]

I have made a small survey of the way existing Topic Maps actually use scope.
It is no science: the sample is rather small (17 Topic Maps) and probably not
wholly representative since Topic Maps for demonstration purposes are
over-represented. Nevertheless the survey yields some (perhaps unsurprising)
results which my gut feeling tells me are not too far from the truth.

Almost 30 % of Topic Maps (5 in the sample) do not use scope at all. Of those
Topic Maps using scope (12 in the sample) about 60 % uses scope for natural
language of names. Another 40 % uses scope for controlled vocabularies. Scope
is used for association name direction in 33 % of those Topic Maps. (Since a
Topic Map may use scope in more than one way, the percentages do not add up to
100 %.) Other uses of scope are incidental.

The full survey and complete results are available at:
http://www.marcdegraauw.com/files/scope_survey.htm

Marc