[topicmapmail] Topic Maps for OOP

[Knud Möller]

Hello!

(This is my first post to this list, and I am not yet familiar with all 
the different projects going on in the TM-community. However, I did some 
googleing and couldn't find answers to the questions I have, so I hope 
it is ok to put them up here.)

I have just begun writing my MA-thesis on a system modeling linguistic 
data with a special OO-programming language (LPS). Part of my work will 
be to look into the possibility of expressing the LPS-class hierarchies 
and class-method relations with Topic Maps. So,

1.) has anyone done something similar? either for a specific 
OO-programming language or in connection with a general model such as 
UML? I have seen references to UML, but they were all concerned with 
expressing topic maps in UML, not vice versa.
2.) If using Topic Maps in this field seems like a good approach (and 
from what I know so far I think it is), then it would be desirable to 
have a template describing how OOP-TMs should look like. If I'm not 
mistaken the question of TM-constraints/templates is work in progress. 
However, I couldn't find out how far this discussion has come yet. I 
found references to TMCL and PMTM4 (and work done by Ontopia), but was 
unable to find information on how far these projects have come, and what 
is to become the standard.
3.) Related to question 2.): Is the possibility of object oriented 
templates/constraints being discussed? In my case, it would be nice to 
have a template hierarchy, where the base-template describes general 
OOP-Topic Maps, and templates for specific OOPLanguages could then be 
derived from that.

OK, thanks for help!

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Knud Möller -  Institut für Sprachliche Informationsverarbeitung,
Universität zu Köln
(Department of Linguistic Data Processing,
University of Cologne, Germany)