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HEINZ NIXDORF INSTITUTOverview

What are Topic Maps?

Graphical Visualizations for Topic Maps

Establishing Asossiations by graphical means

XML Tools in Pike

HEINZ NIXDORF INSTITUTTopic Map Basics (terms)

Topics

Names Base

Sort

display

Occurence

Associations

Scopes

HEINZ NIXDORF INSTITUTAssociations

Each Association has a <association type>

Each topic that participates in an association plays a role <association role type)

(both <association type>, as well as <association role type> are topics themselves)

HEINZ NIXDORF INSTITUTThe Power of Associations

Make the Web machine usable

Allow for better human understanding

"The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation." -- Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, Ora Lassila

HEINZ NIXDORF INSTITUTComparison Web/Semantic Web

current web: recources are interconnected with (meaningless) links

semantic web: typed recources interconnected with associations

HEINZ NIXDORF INSTITUTSynchrone ClientsClients

HEINZ NIXDORF INSTITUTAssociations

A is a B

A was written by B

Note: Associations are not limited to 1:1 relations

BA

HEINZ NIXDORF INSTITUTNon binary associations

YesNo

•Accordingly special diagram types could be supported with templates.

HEINZ NIXDORF INSTITUTThe Meta Data Problem

gains Better search capabilities

Support for intelligent agents

Explicit

problems Authors have to support it Even w3c assumes the semantic web will be limited to some isles in the (non)semantic web.

Our approach – build an application where the metadata is gathered explicitely but without additional effort

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graphical visualisation for association types

Topic

• Associations allow to enforce that each topic participating in a association have to play certain roles <association type role>

• The <Association type> allows the application to bind a visual representation to this type.

• color, bordercolor, marker, shape

• arrow type and color

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How to draw a Semantic Map

Three steps

1. Create Topics

2. Classify Topics

3. Associate Topics

Because you explicitely state which roles and associations are valid in your map, you provide the machine-readable data while simply drawing your map.

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Current Implementation in Java

Elaborated API for dealing with Topic Maps (TM4J)

API for graphical user interfaces

Shared data toolkit

RMI

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sTeamsTeam server server

sTeam KernelsTeam Kernel

Object-repository

pike

Database Database InterfaceInterface

COALCOAL

WebDAV

Roxen/Roxen/ApacheApache

sTeamsTeam ClientsClients

Web ServerWeb Server

libXSLlibXSL

communication and documentcommunication and document-management-server-management-server

sTeam – 2002

COALCOAL

NNTPNNTP POP3POP3 IRCIRC

Annotea

LDAPLDAP

LDAP-Server

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sTeamsTeam server server

sTeam KernelsTeam Kernel

Object-repository

pike

Database Database InterfaceInterface

COALCOAL

WebDAV

Roxen/Roxen/ApacheApache

sTeamsTeam ClientsClients

Web ServerWeb Server

libXSLlibXSL

communication and documentcommunication and document-management-server-management-server

sTeam – with external Topic Map Server

COALCOAL

NNTPNNTP POP3POP3 IRCIRC

Annotea

LDAPLDAP

LDAP-ServerJava-

RMI

TM4J

HEINZ NIXDORF INSTITUTPike XML Tools

indices(Parser.XML); Result 1: ({ /* 5 elements */

"Validating",

"DOM",

"NSTree",

"Simple",

"Tree"

})

Manuals: FIXME Document this function

HEINZ NIXDORF INSTITUTAlternative Solutions

Creating a full featured Topic Map API Based on XML.Tree ?

What about DAML, OWL?

Using the pike-java bridge? How?

Will this allow to use the existing TM4J

JavaTM4JPike

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http://www.open-steam.org