Three levels of information integration
Visual illusion, XQuery-like integration and ...
topic maps
I tried to explain recently how topic map-based
information integration is different from integration based on "pure"
XML.
Firstly, let's look at traditional
portals. They provide visual illusion of information integration. User sees
several portlets which represent "windows" to different applications. In
advanced cases portllets (web parts) can communicate by passing information
between each other.
Another level of
integration can be achieved by using XQuery processor. XQuery processor can
retrieve XML documents from different sources and combined them into a new XML
document.
What is different in case of
Topic Maps?
Topic Map technology
defines
standard
way of merging pieces of information. As soon as information is represented as
topic map (maybe virtually as topic map view), there is a standard procedure of
merging this information with other topic
maps.
In case of "pure" XML I
implement in fact "custom merging" of XML documents each time when I define a
query. XML does not have a concept of merging. I guess it is possible to define
some kind of merging rules for documents which share the same schema. But I
cannot imaging merging of XML documents with different
schemas.
With Topic Maps we have
information merging "out of the box". We can merge information produced by the
applications of the same type. For example, if blog application can publish blog
as topic map we can merge several blogs into one and we can see what different
people think about different topics.
We
also can merge topic maps produced by applications of different types.
And using upcoming TMQL it will be
possible to produce XML representation of merged information.
Posted: Wed - April 21, 2004 at 08:31 AM