[topicmapmail] What tools to use for colaborative topicmaps editing

[Robert Barta]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 05:11:05PM +0000, Kal Ahmed wrote:
> >     If the ontology is changed, how to propagate the change in all XTMs ?
> >
> 
> option is more robust. If the change would cause some of the existing work 
> done by the editor to become "invalid", then I think that the only way to 
> handle this would be to include a specification of the constraints of the 
> ontology (e.g. using OSL or AsTMa! or eventually TMCL) within/alongisde the 
> ontolog topic map. That way authors could be guided by a TMCL/OSL/AsTMa! 
> aware editing environment to make the changes demanded by the change in the 
> ontology.

> Disclaimer: This is mostly theoretical - there is not AFAIK an application 
> which would do all of this for you. Although you may get a good deal of the 
> way there with existing topic map engines.

There will have to be applications supporting an ontology transformation.
It is a natural by-product of the topic map paradigm that different parties
see an application domain in a different light:

   - customer who wants to buy a watch
   - merchant which sells several watch brands
   - manufacturer of a particular watch brand

All talk about 'watches' but in a different way. It is fundamental, because
it is all about the underlying business model. Consequently at exchange
events information following ontology O1 will end up in ontology O2. Any
TMQL is basically a ontology transformation language.

There is also this other issue that ontologies drift in time. If there
is no way to "upgrade" a map to a new ontology then the whole system does
not make any sense.

\rho