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From: Khalil Ahmed [mailto:kal@techquila.com]
On 30 Nov 2004, at 22:02, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> Yes. It is, after all, a map. I tend to think of
> inverted indices, but after seeing the Ontopia demo,
> particularly the query demo, it can be more.
>
> So it might also be a useful way to map say, discoverable
> assets/interfaces/innovations. In other words, we might
> use it to document and navigate discoverable services.
> Would a UDDI registry be a good candidate for topic mapping?
>
>A lot of things that UDDI has tried to achieve could be done with a
>topic map. The question is if that is the right thing to do. From the
>point of view of a registry of services and a query interface for
>retrieving information about those services, UDDI is already in that
>space. How well embedded UDDI is I don't really have a good feel for -
>and so I would (personally) feel cautious about making proposals to
>throw it all out and start again with topic maps!
I doubt any of us has the clout to throw it out and start over. But
the applicability of topic maps to this kind of task is intrigueing
given one might want to index the content that UDDI has into broader
and narrower contexts.
>However, in terms of documenting and managing the deployment of web
>services, UDDI really only addresses half of the problem. A topic map
>view of a UDDI registry leaves the way open for extension with other
>views of the deployed services (e.g. a schema components-based view; a
>development / source control view; a system architecture / backend
>components view) - these additional views are not necessarily something
>that one can standardise, but within a standardised framework like
>topic maps, it is easy enough to express and process those views,
Precisely. Discoverability in the enterprise is a much broader
issue than a registry of software services.
> We could treat event types as topic types. I have to wrap
> my head around that idea a bit more to see what utility that
> could have. Hmmm... if everything is a topic, then events
> are topics, human rights are topics, and the intersections
> of these are... topics?
>
<plug class="gratuitous">
<snip />
Cool. What is your experience in the time/tedium of creating
topic maps?
>Slightly more relevantly, I have used the wikipedia to provide some of
>the topic subject indicators in that topic map. As a global community
>resource, freely accessible and openly managed, wikipedia is a great
>source of subject descriptions.
Certainly.
> Of course, I'm still contemplating what I bent some ears
> with at XML 2004: the notion that a uniform set of human
> rights should be created for the WWW based perhaps on an
> ontology of event types. It seems to me that event types
> are a core piece of Daconta's venn diagram intersection
> of 'relevance'.
>That sounds interesting - though the notion of creating a uniform set
>of human rights is far more problematic than an ontology of event types
>(and the ontology bit is hard enough!)
No doubt that is so. Event types are a core piece of any public safety
dispatch system, and many legal constraints on events such as search
and seizure, opening private records, etc., are couched in terms of
event types. So in many real world ways, the system already works
like that. It simply isn't always in machine processable form and/or
casual reader form. On the other hand, it might be a nice service for
an OnStar-like system to provide given how much the car knows about
the context of its own performance (eg, speed) and what it can obtain
from the intelligent transportation systems that are observing it.
You see, tomorrow is today and our tech is outracing our legal system.
Many don't want to think seriously about these issues. As a result,
only a few will. Perhaps this is unavoidable, but I'd like to believe
that open clusters of open thinkers will take up the task before the
technology is fielded. Perhaps John Cowan is right and we have to
screw one up first before we design one correctly.
Still, it seems to me that a universal set of human rights in the
virtual universe is an achievable thing even if a job for the UN
and the W3C. I'd rather they take it on than DARPA and DoD.
len
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