[topicmapmail] Generating TMs out of relational Databases / How To?

[Murray Altheim]

Andreas Fleck wrote:
> Thanks for your answer Murray.
> 
> I will try to lay my hands on the XML Topic Maps book you recommended and
> try to get it through our library.
> 
> Can you maybe give me a short idea what visualization techniqués there are
> out there?
> 
> I am concentrating on TouchGraph and Hypergraph at the moment.
> 
> Are there maybe another ones which i should take a look at?

I think almost all of the commercial Topic Map tools have some
form of visualization, and Kal Ahmed's TM4J project has a few
side projects written by others that involve visualization of
one sort or the other. I'm thinking more at a high level, of
being able to visualize with a high level of detail say, a few
hundred Topics versus say, thousands of Topics. And the number
and way that Associations are displayed may also impact the
choice of tool. I myself haven't done an exhaustive survey of
all the visualization tools out there. Depending on how much
programming you yourself wish or are able to do will also impact
which tools you choose. You may wish to export from the Topic
Map tools a form suitable for visualizing in the chosen tool,
be that GXL or GraphML or whatever.

Perhaps someone else can chime in with some examples -- I think
there's a few web pages/wiki out there with stuff about this,
but I'm just stepping away from my computer (the sun is out and
this is England), so I'll not be back for awhile (at least five
minutes).

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                          http://www.altheim.com/murray/
Strategic and Services Development
The Open University Library
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK               .

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