[Sigia-l] Topic maps and IA

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Karl Fast
| 
| My (limited) understanding of topic maps and OWL and all that stuff
| is that it gives you an alternate mechanism for representing and
| encoding semantics.
| 
| Is it new? Probably not that new if you dig down to the foundations.
| You can do this stuff with other technologies.
|
| However, having the right representation can dramatically change the
| cost and complexity of implementing a solution to a problem.
| 
| You can model just about anything in an RDBMS. But some things are
| hellish and kludgy. And you can always create your own data
| structures but that can be painful and error prone depending on the
| complexity of the problem.

Yes, I think this sums it up quite nicely.
 
| There are going to be cases where topic maps will make your life a
| lot easier. What are they?

Organizing information so you can find it. 

Modelling information that is rich in relationships, and where you
need complex rules to work with the relationships. 

Dealing with information from different sources that needs to be
integrated. 

That's the best summary I can do right now, I think.

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >