[Sigia-l] RE: multi-faceted & topic map

[Doug Howell (IT)]

Lars Marius Garshol wrote:

<quote>...even with topic maps you can choose how
ambitious you want to be with regards to the structure you create. You
don't have to spend 20 years developing the Ontology of Everything. In
many cases we've been able to create useful ontologies for clients in
a couple of days.

But you *do* need some degree of data modelling skills to be able to
create an ontology, and if you don't have that using the more
restricted technologies may be just as well. Whether it will be just
as well for the client is another matter, of course.</quote>

Just catching up after a brief vacation, and am interested in this thread. I recently asked the group what they thought of creating taxonomies/faceted classification systems from existing data models (entity relation diagrams), and got a few interesting replies. Now your comment makes me wonder if you might have a comment. Could you see creating an ontology from a data model, perhaps using the relationship names and types to define the relationship types in the ontology (or topic map)? How would this compare to creating taxonomies or FC systems from the same model?

Thanks,
Doug Howell
Information Architect
Borders Group Inc.