Technologies 2001

[Daniel Rivers-Moore]

Several things this group should know:

1) This Knowledge Technologies 2001 conference has been organised by GCA
largely _because_ of the growing interest in Topic Maps within the XML
community. It was indeed originally billed as being a "Topic Maps"
conference, before the organisers (GCA) wisely decided to broaden its scope.

2) At the last major GCA Conference (XML 2000 in Washington DC in December
last), Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the W3C, made a keynote speech about the
"Semantic Web", in which he said "We hope and expect that there will be a
harmonization between RDF and Topic Maps, and that will be a very good thing
for the Semantic Web". For those of you who are not already aware of it, the
term "semantic Web" is Tim B-L's label/buzzword for the next generation of
Web capabilities, that will (or at least, that is the aspiration) allow more
intelligent and complete information exchange than is currently possible.
The W3C has been championing RDF (Resource Description Framework) as its way
of doing this. But RDF is not making it to mainstream acceptance as fast or
as fully as W3C would like, and there is hope that XTM (XML Topic Maps) and
RDF, brought together in some way, might fare better.

3) Since RDF is essentially an "acyclic directed graph" (it consists of
"triples", each of which associates a property with a resource), and Topic
Maps essentially provide a generic way of associating anything with anything
else, and since the EPISTLE Core Model, and the current work on EXIST that
is happening in SC4/WG10, address not unrelated concerns, I began work way
back in January 2000 on exploring whether, and if so how, these three things
might be brought together. The result has been the development of an
informal community of interest going under the name KnoW (Knowledge on the
Web ... www.rivcom.com/know), which now numbers people from overe 60
companies, consortia, universities etc.

4) KnoW is about to be formally constituted as a legal entity with a formal
membership structure, in order that it can have better positioning and
funding (through membership dues, to cover administrative costs) and begin
work on some real projects. One of these projects is to be an investigation
of the relationships between Topic Maps, RDF and EXIST (and perhaps one or
two other related specifications).

5) Ann Wrightson (active in the STEP/SGML Harmonisation work initiated by
SC4, but coming at it from the SGML side through her active involvement with
ISO/IEC  JTC1/SC34), is giving a presentation at Knowledge Technologies at
which she will be talking (among other things) about the work of IIDEAS
(EXIST and the Data Integration Architecture).

6) I shall be (and have consistently been over the past 2 years) including
mention of STEP and STEP Part 28 in my presentation and tutorial at
Knowledge Technologies 2001.

CONCLUSION

There is growing awareness of the connections between these things. The SC4
work is getting exposure. It could do with more. I'd recommend to any of you
to attend the KT2001 conference in Austin Texas at the beginning of March
(see www.gca.org for details). I'd recommend any of you interested in the
bringing together of these things to look at the KnoW website at
www.rivcom.com/know, and send me email if you'd like to know more, or if
you'd like access to the member area of that site. (Currently membership of
KnoW is still free and open to anyone, subject to existing members having
voiced no objection to your candidature within 7 days of it being proposed!)

Hope to see some of you in Texas

Best regards

Daniel

-----Original Message-----
From: Kjell Bengtsson [mailto:Kjell.Bengtsson at epmtech.jotne.com]
Sent: 07 February 2001 09:38
To: 'wg10 at steptools.com'
Subject: Technologies 2001 



Hi David, 

2 things that may be of interest to this discussion.

a) Promote SC4 

EPM will run a half-day ISO 10303 workshop at the next XML Europe event in
Berlin, starting 
May 21 st. The agenda is open for contribution :-) 

More at http://www.gca.org/attend/2001_conferences/europe_2001/


b) Topic maps.

Here is an early draft Express Model that defines how you can store your
Topic maps. 
I guess I could mentioned that they store data in Express Data Manager. 

 <<express-model.pdf>> 
Hope this helps. 

- Kjell 

dmprice at us.ibm.com  wrote : 

WG10, I saw a few familiar names on this agenda (Daniel Rivers-Moore for
one). Anyone planning on attending or presenting anything SC4 is working? In
a related question, after looking at the agenda I'm wondering how in the
world a standard as conceptual and abstract as Topic Maps is getting
attention at in W3C and at a conference like this and nothing SC4 is doing
seems to be. Thanks, David IBM Corporation 5300 International Blvd. N.
Charleston, SC 29418, USA dmprice at us.ibm.com Phone : +1 (843) 760-4341 Fax :
+1 (843) 760-3349 Oooo. (UNC) ) / (*/ 


____________________________________________________________________
Kjell A. Bengtsson        E-mail: Kjell.Bengtsson at epmtech.jotne.com
EPM Technology AS         Home of the EXPRESS Data Manager

P.O Box 6629 Etterstad    Tel: Int + 47 23 17 17 17
N-0607 Oslo               Fax: Int + 47 23 17 17 01  
Norway                    Web:  http://www.epmtech.jotne.com