[Sigia-l] Topic maps and IA

[Karl Fast]

> I think your point, which is well taken, is that there isn't
> anything you can do with topic maps/ontologies (treating them the
> same at the moment) that you can't do with relational algebra or
> custom data structures.  That's true.  

note: I haven't followed this discussion closely....

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.

There are going to be cases where topic maps will make your life a
lot easier. What are they?


--karl
http://www.livingskies.com/