putting topic maps to rest.tmra2010

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Putting Topic Maps to

REST

David Damen, Maria Patrickson

September 30th 2010Putting Topic Maps to REST

What did we want?

• Remote access:

– Manipulate topic maps

– Manipulate topics

– Search

• RESTful

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What is out there?

• TMRAP:

– Part of Ontopia

– Limited in functionality

– Not exactly RESTful

• Topincs:

– Better in functionality, but not entirely

• TMIP:

– Built on top of path expression Topic Maps query language

– Complicated

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Resources Representations

Self-descriptive messages

HATEOAS

REST

HATEOAS

• Hypermedia As The Engine Of Application State

– RESTful webapp should be modelled as a state machine

– Client transitions from state to state

– Representations contain valid state transitions

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HATEOAS – online book store

• Book 1

• Book 2

• Book 3

Fill basket

• Credit card

• Address

Add payment information • Shipping

method

• Gift options

Confirm order

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REST

Topic Maps

engine

Community support

Tropics

Tropics – resources

• Topic Maps

• Topics

• Associations

• Query results

IRIs as item identifiers

IRIs as occurrences in a navigation ontology

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Tropics – identifying resources

• /topics/earth

• /topics/earth?ti=/topicmaps/astronomy

• /topics/earth?ti=/groups/space

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Tropics – representations

• As a Topic Map:

– XTM 2.0/2.1

– CXTM

– JTM

• Other formats can support most (but not all) resources:

– CTM

– LTM

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Tropics – messages

• HTTP:

– GET

– PUT

– POST

– DELETE

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Tropics - HATEOAS

• Application state in a Topic Maps engine?

• What is a Topic Maps engine is used for?

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Tropics - HATEOAS

• Information extraction:

– Querying

– Navigation

• Application state for a Topic Maps engine:

– The piece of information retrieved

• State transition for a Topic Maps engine client:

– Traversal from one piece of information to the next

– Querying

– Administrative functions

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Knowledge navigation – example

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Planet

Earth

Mars

Star

Celestial

Body

Sun

weight weight

Planet

Earth

Mars

Sattelite

ATLAS

picture

Knowledge navigation – intra Topic Map navigation

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Planet

Earth

Mars

Star

Celestial

Body

Sun

weight weight

Planet

Earth

Mars

Sattelite

ATLAS

picture

Knowledge navigation – extra Topic Map navigation

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Planet

Earth

Mars

Star

Celestial

Body

Sun

weight weight

Planet

Earth

Mars

Sattelite

ATLAS

picture

Knowledge navigation – merged Topic Map navigation

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Planet

Earth

Mars

Star

Celestial

Body

Sun

weight weight

Planet

Earth

Mars

Sattelite

ATLAS

picture

Earth

picture

weight

Tropics – navigation ontology

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Tropics – example – Earth Topic

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Planet

Earth

Link

Parameter

Search the

engine

query

weight

http://.../searchuri

GETmethod

queryalias

qalias

Xsd:stringdata

type

Create

Topic

Tropics – Is HATEOAS worth it?

• Open question…

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Tropics – proposed URI space

• /topicmaps/{id}

• /groups/{id}

• /topics/{id}

• /associations/{id}

• /search

• Query/filter parameters

• Versioning

=> More detailed info in the API definition at http://j.mp/tropics-api

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Tropics – current status

• /topicmaps – GET

• /topicmaps/{id} – GET, PUT

• /groups/all – GET

• /topics – GET (only ‘has-type’)

• /topics/{id} - GET

• /search - GET (supports ‘tolog’)

• (Will be) part of Ontopia Sandbox

• Open for participation!

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Acknowledgement

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• Tropics:

• David Damen

• Maria Patriksson

This work has received funding from the European Commission through the

Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under the Space Theme, under

grant agreement n◦218815 within the ULISSE Project (USOCs KnowLedge

Integration and Dissemination for Space Science Experimentation).

Questions?

Thank you for your time!

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