Managing subject proxies and Topic Maps: Enterprise perspective
If we would like to extend subject centric computing
environment to Enterprise level we need to support multiple levels of relevancy
and security for subject proxies and information resources.
In Enterprise case we deal not only with "personal"
subjects, but with Enterprise, department, team relevant subjects. Some subjects
can be available only for specific groups of users based on security policies.
The same, of course, is true for information
resources.
Applications often have own
security models. If we want to export and merge subjects proxies from different
applications we need to have "generalized" security model for subject proxy
map.
In Enterprise environment
information workers consume and produce information resources. They can wear
different "hats" during a day. It is important to implement concept of subject
relevancy based on context (role,
workflow-based).
I see subject proxy
map as a very active substance. At any time I can work with subject proxies
which I have access to. But my "subject views" are optimized based on current
context. I can manually specify context, for example: "Researching technology",
"Testing application". If I start some application, application can introduce
additional dynamic context. If I open resource (document, report, web page
etc.), resource also creates a new context and activates subject proxies which
are relevant to this resource.
One of
the challenges is that most of existing Enterprise applications are not
transparent in terms of subject proxies. Try to ask questions about different
kind of objects application deals with. Typically "main" objects can be found in
application forms and reports. Some secondary objects often do not have explicit
representations. Application design documents (UML diagrams ?) can help at this
step.
Posted: Wed - September 8, 2004 at 12:10 AM