It is time for "Save as XTM" initiative
More and more applications can produce XML
representation of internal information and save it to shared storage. It helps
users to synchronize information on several computers. XML representation also
helps to create user communities based on sharing of information. Think about
shared calendars, music and picture mixes, blogs, recipes. It's nice, but it can
be much better... with topic maps.
Topic Maps provide "out of the box" support for
information sharing and
merging. This support is based on ability to
explicitly represent subjects and ability to connect any piece of information
with subjects.
If we have a blog
entry, for example, we have a standard
mechanism to express that this entry is related to
specific subjects. And we have a standard way to merge information from several
blogs. As a result we can easily find all blog entries related to the same
subject.
"Pure" XML solutions can
encode relationships between information pieces and subjects. But these
solutions are based on custom schemas. Each time we need to define custom
merging rules which also can include transformations between various XML
schemas.
It is
time... it is time to promote XTM
format as "save as" option for various
applications. Applications can use optimized
internal data models to implement specific set of functions. But applications
can also publish Topic Map - based representations of internal information to
shared storage. Other applications can "subscribe" to external topic maps and
merge external and internal information. Of course, applications remember source
of information so users can keep track of "who said
what".
With "save as XTM" support it
will be possible to use "universal topic map browsers" to explore information
from different applications. Users also will be able to rely on specific
applications with optimized views.
Posted: Sat
- May 1, 2004 at 01:18 PM