[topicmapmail] Master thesis on Topic Maps

[Joril Andersen]

Hi,

I am a masterstudent at the University of Informatics in Oslo and I am doing 
a thesis on using Topic Maps in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks, at the moment. I 
fugured this forum would be very suitable for asking advice: )

The background is a project called Ad-hoc Infoware, where they research 
information sharing in emergency scenarios, by using Manets. My job is to 
take at look at Toic Maps as an appropritate technology for this information 
sharing.
http://folk.uio.no/infoware/

After many discusions, it has boiled down to testing the use of TMs in 
mobile phones, since this is the most resource weak device available at an 
emergency scene. Samuel Vigdal has written a short thesis on the subject and 
has managed to perform some testing, by loading and doing some queries on a 
mobile phone. I am now taking over the coding and wish to explore the 
merging functionality, which I look upon as the heart of Topic Maps! We are 
using the MTV(Mobile Topic Viewer), which is a  TM engine for mobile 
phones-developed as  a part of a research project called SHARK:
http://kbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/ivs/Projekte/Shark/index_en.html

My idea is to implement the mergeIn() method from the TMAPI witch is missing 
in the MTV engine. This could be very valuable for testing.Does anyone know 
if this is very time-consuming or a very difficult task? I am trying to find 
out if this is something I should perform or maby do something simpler..I 
have 6 months left of my master thesis (the report is about 100 pages to 
write..)I have  a lot of Java experience from my studies.

Does anyone know of any good merging projects? Any good applications where 
the merging functionality of TMs has been explored?
And last but not least; Has the use of mobile phones with TMs been explored 
anywhere else besides in the SHARK project?

I an very grateful for any advice or tips on these matters: )

best regards Joril Adersen (jorilandersen at hotmail.com)



Joril Andersen
Helgesens gate 3
0553 Oslo
Mobil: 95256088