How to cite this paper
Townley, Andrew, Sanida Omerovic and Peter F. Brown. “Putting it all in context: Context and Large-Scale Information Sharing with Topic
Maps.” Presented at Balisage: The Markup Conference 2008, Montréal, Canada, August 12 - 15, 2008. In Proceedings of Balisage: The Markup Conference 2008. Balisage Series on Markup Technologies, vol. 1 (2008). https://doi.org/10.4242/BalisageVol1.Brown01.
Balisage: The Markup Conference 2008
August 12 - 15, 2008
Balisage Paper: Putting it all in context
Context and Large-Scale Information Sharing with Topic Maps
Andrew Townley
Andrew worked for Pensive's predecessor company as a consultant during 2007. He has
his own company, Archistry, based in Dublin, Ireland.
Sanida Omerovic
Sales and Marketing Manager
Pensive S.A., Belgium
Sanida has a background in telecommunications and eletrical engineering and more recently
in knowledge representation and bio-informatics.
Peter F. Brown
Managing Director
Pensive S.A., Belgium
Peter has spent most of his career working in the public sector at a European level,
in large part as a tenured official of the European Parliament. He has worked in the
field of information management for 15 years.
Copyright © 2008 Pensive S.A. No part of this paper can be reproduced without citing
its referenceable source.
Abstract
Two major concerns in creating large-scale Topic Maps applications are: first, the
role and capture of context within a specific topic map, and second, how the Topic
Maps paradigm - specifically the XTM specification - allows the linking and efficient
use of Topic Maps deployed on a massive scale, such as the Internet, to support extremely
large-scale information sharing. These two subjects initially seem to be separate
concerns. However, upon reflection and further discussion, it is clear that they are
intertwined and closely related to the issue of scalability.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
-
- Large Scale Information Sharing
- Scope and Context
- What Is Context
- Context, Fragmentation and Communication
- Context and Ontologies
- Context Representation
- Information Sharing
-
- A Problem of Scale & Centralization
- Revisiting the Context Problem
- Commercial Opportunities and Potential Architectures
- Summary and Next Steps
Introduction
This paper follows up from an initial note drafted by Andrew
Townley as a result of discussions held during Pensive's
research and developer boot camp held in Vienna in July
2007. The two most important themes discussed were the role and
capture of context within a specific topic
map, and how the Topic Maps paradigm -
specifically the XTM specification - would allow the linking and
efficient use of Topic Maps deployed on a massive scale, such as
the Internet, to support extremely large-scale
information sharing. These two subjects initially
seemed separate concerns, however, upon reflection and further
discussion, it was clear that they are intertwined. Since July,
further research and investigation have been done into these
subjects.
In the following we will present a summary of both the initial
questions raised in Vienna and why they are important as well as
the state of our current thinking on these two issues.
We start with some initial thoughts regarding the importance of
issues related to context in large-scale Topic Maps
applications, along with some of the key questions that arose
during our discussions. These questions will then be addressed
in more detail in the following sections.
The goal of this paper is to put forward some ideas in a broader
forum and elicit feedback and alternative perspectives. It is
possible that these ideas have already been discussed elsewhere,
and we are simply not aware of any consensus previously reached
regarding them. Hopefully, this paper will help to clarify some
of these issues and lead towards practical solutions.
Scope and Context
Scope allows multiple views on a particular topic map as well
as the filtering and adapting of information contained in a
topic map based on the needs of the user [PEPP00,
PEPP02, PARK03].
Hence the Topic Maps specifications [ISOTM,
XTM, TMDM] provide a
mechanism in the scope construct for
representing the idea of context. Accordingly the purpose of
scope is to represent "the context within which a statement is
valid. Outside the context represented by the scope, the
statement is not known to be valid. Formally, a scope is
composed of a set of topics that together define the
context. That is, the statement is known to be valid only in
contexts where all the subjects in the scope apply"
[TMDM].
Related questions that have been discussed were:
-
How best to capture context information for
various uses within a topic map?
-
How to filter information in a topic map -
including access control to users, in both role-based and
mandatory access control models How to dynamically expand
and narrow the user's view of the topic map during general
exploratory navigation?
-
How to capture changes or additions to
context information after the initial topic map was created?
Are these changes new context that needs to be
captured?
And concerning general modelling questions:
-
Which ontological constructs are best
deployed for complex descriptions of context using many
topics to define a scope?
-
Should they be declared as a single topic
which defines an instance of a bag data
type, or should they simply enumerate the individual
topics?
Furthermore the discussion explored the question of how one
might represent context using associations rather than the
scope construct, as it seemed potentially to be more dynamic
and adaptable than what is syntactically allowed by [XTM]. In discussing a topic map's ability to
capture context explicitly enough to be useful outside a small
community using either approach, the discussion naturally
gravitated to the question of what exactly is meant by
"context".
What Is Context
Context is one of those concepts that most people feel is
essential to understanding something, but which sparks great
debate when one attempts to define it. The main issue in the
scientific and technical communities revolves around whether
context should be regarded as subjective or objective [MENZ99]. Once a decision is made regarding one's
view on context, there is the question of how to represent it
computationally.
Subjective context is what most people
understand context to be. It is experiential in nature and
includes the total of meanings (ideas, assumptions,
preconceptions and associations) that are related to a thing
or event and which serve to influence our attitudes,
judgements, perspectives, and general knowledge of something
[AKMA00]. While Menzel argues that
subjective context always implies an "outer context" which
exists outside any given context, recursively, that enables
individuals or intelligent agents to adopt a broader
perspective to reason about the original context, Bohm's
theory supports the idea that context and those perceiving it are
part of a unified whole in much the same way as the observer
and the observed are related in relativity theory and quantum
theory [BOHM80].
The ability to leverage separate views of a given situation is
often useful or indeed necessary, but we need to be aware that
these separations are not necessarily accurate or complete
reflections of reality. They must be seen as simply a useful
mechanism in a particular domain or situation to aid in
understanding it.
Objective context, interpreted as
"outside the skull of any reasoning
individual", is much more directly related to the works of
Barwise, Perry, Seligman and Devlin on Situation Theory and
Information Flow Theory [MENZ99]. The focus
of the objective context is the setting in which the objects
and available information reside and also encompasses the
relationships between them. The focus of Menzel's work [MENZ99] is to define a logic for reasoning within
objective contexts such that a given statement is true in the
portion of the real world described by a particular situation
rather than deal with the complexity of the perceptions and
assumptions involved in how the participants view a given
interaction. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to
create a definition of context which exists outside these
subjective perceptions and which will remain invariant for all
the participants.
Clearly, both definitions of context are attempting to capture
information about the environment in which an interaction
takes place in order that some level of shared understanding
between the participants be established. However, there is a
considerable difference in the types of information that would
be included in each definition. Before determining which
perspective would be the most useful in terms of sharing
information and knowledge with the Topic Maps standard, it is
necessary to consider what the goals really are of including
contextual information in specific topic maps.
Context, Fragmentation and Communication
By any account, context is an essential part of successful
communication. In practice, it determines how much information
must be explicitly stated between the participants and how
much information is shared between the participants. Akman
provides the example of late arrival to a meeting [AKMA00]. In order for the person to understand
and effectively participate in the ongoing discussion, they
must establish some of the background on what has already
happened during the meeting.
Establishing an objective context would attempt to capture the
situation of the meeting, independently of the attitudes,
beliefs and motivations of the participants because the goal
of the objective context is to establish "complex, structured
pieces of the world" [MENZ99]. It is
essentially the view that an objective outside observer might
have of the situation. For example, some of the following
information would likely be aspects of the objective context:
-
The names, roles and positions of the meeting participants
-
The location of the meeting
-
The materials provided for and present in the meeting
-
Any notes or diagrams made during the meeting
-
The time of day of the meeting
-
The event that one participant arrived late and needed to be "brought up to speed"
-
The minutes of the meeting capturing the topics discussed
-
What was said, by whom and how
-
Any outcomes of the meeting
-
Any references to any other contexts (situations) mentioned during the meeting
In respect to the classic journalistic Five
W's,
a truly objective observer attempting to capture an objective
context would establish each of the "who", "what", "where",
"when" and "how", but would be unable to capture any meaningful
understanding of the "why" beyond any surface remarks made
during the meeting, e.g. "We are here today to finalize the
implementation plan for Project X". While this may make any
given context more easily suited to use by autonomous agents and
deductive reasoning, it may not accurately reflect the complete
reality of the situation.
Therefore, the real question is how accurately one wants to
capture "reality" in a particular context. Akman cites several
examples where the actions and behaviour in a particular
situation reflect the dramatically different views of reality
held by the participants [AKMA00]. Attempting to understand these interactions from an
objective perspective would likely result in confusing and
conflicting interpretations, with the person trying to
understand the situation asking themselves, "now, why did they
do that?". Searching for the answer to that particular
question would truly result in insights and new knowledge for
the person who asked it.
In contrast, establishing the subjective context of the same
meeting would involve some level of understanding the
participant's mental models. An
individual's mental model include all of their experiences,
beliefs and assumptions about the world. Mental models are
important to establishing subjective contexts because they
both reflect and shape an individual's understanding of
reality [SENG90],
i.e. their concepts of what is true and
what is not. For the above meeting, knowing the motivations,
intents and attitudes of the participants may dramatically
alter one's understanding of actions taken and information
disclosed during the meeting. This information provides the
answers to the "why" question seemingly ignored by the
objective context.
Menzel's assertion that subjective context correlates to
logical theories made up of sets of propositions [MENZ99] exactly echoes Bohm's earlier theory on
fragmentation, itself developed as a way to explain some of
the inconsistencies he found in relativity theory and quantum
theory. According to Bohm, fragmentation
is a result of holding to a theory or set of propositions as
being a true reflection of reality rather than viewing it as
insights into a given domain and "which are neither true nor
false but, rather, clear in certain domains, and unclear when
extended beyond these domains" [BOHM80]. These insights are shaped by our mental models, and must
therefore be subjective. According to Bohm, the true reality
can never be grasped explicitly; it is an implicit whole that
is exposed through each subjective context. Recognition of
context as subjective is a key to greater understanding of a
particular domain, because it is the interactions and
boundaries of existing contexts that provide new insights of
understanding into a particular domain.
It would therefore seem that the subjective interpretation
of context cannot be ignored. Topic maps are a communications medium
to encapsulate and convey information,
understanding and knowledge about a particular domain. They
are ultimately created by humans - whether directly authored
by people or created automatically by software created by
people - and therefore reflect a subjective view of that
domain shaped by the implicit factors inherent in any form of
communication. This means that they will be vulnerable to many
contextual ambiguities "born out of a misplaced belief on the
part of the author that the reader has access to the author's
collective dimension" [AKMA00].
This vulnerability is potentially problematic because of the
merging process defined by the Topic Maps specification:
unlike a document or other work created with a particular
intention and with assumptions about context shared between
author and readership, information in a specific topic map can
find itself far outside the context the original author had in
mind. Consequently, any implicit or shared context will be
lost. Since context is so critical to effective communication,
determining how to best capture it is also critical to
creating effective Topic Maps.
It may well be that there are two, arguably conflicting, views
on the role of topic maps. Is a specific topic map intended as
something to be studied for greater understanding of a given
domain, or is it intended to capture a body of information to
support ad-hoc queries to answer questions about a
domain—limited only to the information at hand? How this
question is answered may have significant implications for the
type of information and manner used in expressing context
within the instance.
In the first case, the goal is to engage users so that they
become active participants in the topic map. In this case, the
information in the specific topic map would act similarly to
the text in Paul Auster's literature and become "'a
springboard for the imagination'" [AKMA00]. The intended use for the topic map is to help the user
understand something new about the topic map's domain. Knowing
as much as possible about the domain-view of those capturing
the information and relationships - including the ontology -
of the topic map will greatly enhance the process of
cross-domain information sharing. In this respect, support
for a more subjective interpretation of context would be
valuable.
If, in the second case, the goal of the topic map is
essentially to be a sophisticated, multi-dimensional database
that is able to respond to queries over its contents, then the
level of contextual information captured may not need to be as
great, as indicated above. Its goal is not to support deep
analysis of a domain, but rather to provide, initially at
least, more superficial views of the domain by offering
answers to operational needs. Further analysis of the
responses may prompt a deeper exploration of the information
within the domain of the topic map, but
it is not likely to prompt deeper reasoning
about the domain. Therefore, it may be more
reasonable to assume a more objective interpretation of
context for this second scenario.
In concluding this section, it is worth noting that many of these issues
are not the exclusive prerogative of the Topic Maps standard.
Context and Ontologies
Following Bohm's view that there can never be an explicit view
of reality as it is and that anyone's individual or shared
world-view of reality is simply one way or view of the
implicit whole, ontologies must essentially define the
boundaries of a particular "domain view", but can never
represent that domain as the one, true representation. This
view - sometimes referred to as the "information territory" -
would seem to confirm that any search for a unifying, fixed
upper ontology is necessarily futile. From Bohm's viewpoint,
it may be possible to define a more unified view of the world
which treats previous views as specializations of the new
unified view (e.g. Newtonian physics vs. quantum theory), but
which will still have essential differences and distinctions
from other views of the same domain [BOHM80]. It does not imply that this new insight is final,
however.
In this respect, working with Topic Maps benefits from the fact that thestandard
does not require content within a particular topic map to conform to
a fixed ontology. Any ontology used is merely a
guideline. Therefore, it would seem that Topic Maps has
potentially the greatest chance of being useful ways of
capturing knowledge without falling prey to Bohm's theory of
fragmentation. In his words, "to be confused about what is
different and what is not, is to be confused about everything"
[BOHM80]. The flexibility of Topic Maps
would tend to allow someone with an awareness of fragmentation
to be able to view a particular domain and explore the
relationships not only between the topics and their
occurrences, but also between the different, fragmentary views
captured in multiple ontologies. Taken as a device to reason
about a particular domain, this could be
an extremely useful feature of the Topic Maps specification.
In a scenario where an ontology is used to define context, it
becomes critically important to identify the boundaries or
context in which a particular ontology applies vs. any other
ontology. While this may be straightforward enough when using
explicit ontologies, it will obviously prove to be more of a
challenge for topic maps using implicit ontologies. In the
same way that every software system has an architecture,
explicit or not, so too does every topic map have an
ontology.
Context Representation
While the two mechanisms for representing context defined by
the Topic Map specifications have been discussed above, there
has also been considerable work done in the domain of
Situation Theory in attempting to define a mechanism for
representing context computationally [TIN94,
AKMA00, MENZ99].
Much of that work includes, directly or indirectly,
the concept of an infon,
a basic unit of
information [DEVL92], as a way to represent
context. One of these systems, BABY-SIT, uses the infon
directly as a primitive system object to capture the
definition of a situation, or, in parameterized form, a set of
possible situations [TIN94]. The motivation
for BABY-SIT was to create a system for the development and
testing of programs based on a situation theory framework
within the domains of linguistics and artificial intelligence.
One of the differences between scope in Topic Maps and infons
as used by BABY-SIT is that BABY-SIT infons consist of a
relation, one or more objects corresponding to a role in the
relationship and a polarity. In this way, they define a
context (situation) that can be used as a primitive object to
determine relevance of other relationships and situations
within the system. While a similar notion could possibly be
expressed as a Topic Map query, this construct does not seem
sufficiently rich with which to represent context within a
specific topic map. However, it could potentially be used as a
primitive construct within a Topic Map query. It is also not
clear what implications the introduction of a new context
representational form may have for existing topic maps.
Information Sharing
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) defines
information sharing as "'making information
available to participants (people, processes or systems).'
Information sharing includes the cultural, managerial and
technical behaviors by which one participant leverages
information held or created by another participant" [DODIS07]. The DoD's specific requirements defined
by their information sharing strategy also include "the ability
to transfer information to and obtain information from external
partners overcoming situations where these partners may have
disparate processes and capabilities and whose role and nature
may not be known prior to an event" [DODIS07]. While the definition and requirements originate with the
DoD, they serve to provide a basis for more generalized thinking
on the subject outside the boundaries of the U.S. or the DoD.
The promise of knowledge management is to allow an organization
to employ its collective intelligence to accomplish its
strategic objectives [BARQ01]. This
collective intelligence is a combination of the organization's
knowledge and
information, where knowledge is
"understanding gained through experience, observation, or study"
[BARQ01] and information is "data that have
been arranged in meaningful patterns" [BARQ01]. Knowledge Organization, a method for elaborating knowledge
structures intended to better facilitate user groups in
accomplishing their work, and Knowledge Representation, the
methods used to encode information into knowledge structures,
are two important aspects of knowledge management where Topic
Maps is particularly applicable [PARK03]. Based on examples of use in knowledge management, it would
seem that the Topic Map standard could also be useful in
enabling information sharing within any environment with
requirements similar to the DoD, as the goals of information
sharing seem to be closely related to the intent of knowledge
management.
A Problem of Scale & Centralization
In attempting to examine how the Topic Maps standard could be
used to enable information sharing, one of the first questions
is how best to address the cross-organizational requirements
inherent in information sharing scenarios. In contrast to most
knowledge management environments which, by definition, are
designed to enable an organization to accomplish its own
strategic objectives, the information sharing environment
extends outside organizational boundaries and interfaces with
external partners in a dynamic manner. The phrase "from
external partners...whose role and nature may not be known
prior to an event" in the DoD definition is extremely
important, because it implies that an organization may not
know with whom it will be needing to exchange information
before it needs it. In this type of environment, it is not
possible to operate a static system under centralized control.
Unfortunately, most implementations of the Topic Maps standard
use it, or XTM, as a means for information exchange between
proprietary systems that are relatively monolithic and
centralized in nature. Information exchanged, using particular
topic maps, is integrated into the proprietary system, and
that information is accessed either via proprietary APIs,
languages or tools that are not generally directly
interoperable with other topic map implementations. It is
worth mentioning the TMAPI effort [TMAPI]
in this respect, however since it is an API, it is specific to
the implementation language - in this case Java - and while it
will provide portability across compliant applications, it
does not provide interoperability with other compliant
applications (see [TOWN05] for a more
technical discussion of the differences between
interoperability and portability, specifically relating to
reliable messaging).
The problems with this scenario are that in order to allow a
user or application to interact with a topic map, that topic
map must be managed by the implementation's software, and it
can only be used by that implementation's tools. Most Topic
Maps tools are designed to be part of a closed system provided
by a single source, and assume that management of all topic
map information will be ultimately centralized. Not
surprisingly, this approach introduces some potential issues
relating to scalability and data ownership in an information
sharing scenario as, according to Annex F.5 of the XTM
specification, every topic and association in any remotely
referenced topic map is added to the local topic map,
triggering additional merging and duplicate suppression [XTM].
In many ways, Topic Maps implementations share characteristics
of hypermedia systems of the 1980's in that they are closed
environments, and they ultimately assume ownership of the
content they manage. This issue was one of the main reasons
cited by Berners-Lee in writing the software that led to the
birth of the World-Wide Web [WRIG01]. It
would seem that the same issues could prevent Topic Maps from
directly addressing the large-scale information sharing
problem - even across a small number of organizations, let
alone on the scale of the Internet.
In an information sharing scenario, decentralized control over
the information is a necessity. Information exchange between
two organizations will mean that both organizations will need
to have a shared representation of that information at a
specific point in time, but that representation must
ultimately remain under the control of the originating
organization. It cannot be subsumed into a merged topic map as
an understanding of the way the world is. It can only be
understood by the consumers of that information that it was
valid when it was accessed, and it may not express the same
information if accessed again. This highly decentralized model
is already present in the World-Wide Web, and is "a key aspect
of the Web's success" [BERN06].
Clearly, one of the other key aspects of the Web's success is
the underlying architecture, Representational State
Transfer (REST), which is designed to support
operation and deployment on Internet-scale. Specifically, this
includes the ideas of anarchic
scalability, to address the needs for the
architecture to continue operating under unanticipated load
and malformed or maliciously constructed data, and
independent deployment to facilitate
"gradual and fragmented change" as the underlying hardware and
software architectures evolve [FIEL00]. Much of these capabilities are achieved through the open
standardization of HTTP, HTML and the URI
specifications. Without such a stable foundational core, the
Web would not be able to support independent evolution, and
interoperability between software and hardware platforms we
often take for granted today.
Such a stable platform for interoperability does not yet exist
for topic maps. However, many lessons from the Web could
likely be successfully applied to the existing specifications
in order to allow them to meet the needs of large-scale
information sharing, including better cross-domain navigation, explicit information
asset ownership,
managed access control of those information assets, building netwroks and communities
of interest.
Such an environment could potentially
create "Topic Webs" within a global information space using
hypermedia constructs that were the aggregate of information
sources supplied by many different organizations and
leveraging the highly decentralized model so successful in the
Web. Thus, navigation within the map would be handled
uniformly through the use of hypermedia links and standardized
XML vocabularies leveraging the underlying transfer protocols
such as HTTP or its potentially forthcoming successor,
Waka
and the views of any given map would be controlled by its
publisher, based on the user's context of access, including
the topic map's authorization and identity assertions.
Revisiting the Context Problem
When extending the Topic Maps model to information sharing
scenarios, adequate capture and representation of context
becomes even more important. Not only will the overall
information space be much more volatile, the potential
cultural and sociological backgrounds of those using the topic
maps are likely to be much more diverse than many Topic Maps
applications today.
In an information sharing scenario, there are at least three
different types of context that will be involved in any
interaction. Three types of context are present in any
interaction with a particular topic map, and it will be even
more important to explicitly capture these in
information-sharing scenarios. They are:
-
The context in which the instance was authored,
-
The context in which the instance is published, and
-
The context in which the instance is accessed.
This could be achieved by ensuring that the specific
context, as represented in Topic Maps by a "scope bundle", can itself
be reified as a distinct subject and thus be represented as a distinct topic.
The Topic Maps Reference Model [TMRM]
certainly points in this direction. Such an approach however
brings with it potentially enormous scalability issues, given the number
and complexity of such scope bundles and the additional danger of possible
recursive contextualization.
In each of the above three steps, authoring, publishing and
access, there is the potential for misinterpretation of the
relationships within the topic map, because each relationship
represents a potential loss of some of the implicit context
which contributed to the topic map. However, as the audience gets wider
a counter phenomenon is likely to kick in and help regain some
balance - that of the "wisdom of crowds": or more precisely, the
wisdom of groups, as it is more likely to be groups
of users with similar - dare we suggest - contexts, who will share
their take on the intended context.
Any of the potential usability and manageability problems
inherent in encoding context information into a topic map in
the local model will be magnified many times in an information
space "whose size can be measured in thousands of terabytes,
and the numbers of users in the hundreds of millions" [BERN06]. Therefore, there needs to be a mechanism
where, while the necessary contextual information will be
available, it should only be referenced as needed. Shared
contexts between individuals and organizations must therefore
be represented explicitly. The real meaning of "changing" a
context (adding or removing references to situations, objects,
information or any subjective views) needs to be determined
with sufficient clarity so that the resulting large-scale
information space represents an improvement on the current Web
when attempting to find relevant information.
Commercial Opportunities and Potential Architectures
A highly distributed model for Topic Maps would require
similar core, slow-evolving protocols and specifications
similar to HTTP, URI and HTML. However, there would be few
restrictions on the speed of evolution in both the content and
the software implementing those specifications.
The main idea is to separate as much as possible the
monolithic view currently present in Topic Maps platforms into
the essentials, so that they could evolve independently and
provide a more dynamic market for more focused products. It is
not hard to envisage multiple Topic Maps engine vendors
specializing in particular aspects of performance,
scalability, availability and management and maybe specialization
around certain user communities. Likewise, authoring
and navigation environments would be decoupled from a
particular Topic Maps engine, allowing for the market to be
developed. Such environments could also address more potential
niches in the market through more vendors providing
solutions. An increase in technology implementations and
proven interoperability between them should lead to increased
adoption of the technology and in a much larger way than has
currently happened with the existing, monolithic approach.
Leveraging the capabilities of hypermedia and potentially even
some of the existing XML vocabularies intended to support
interaction such as XForms or XHTML, would mean that clients
would not be dependent on proprietary HTTP or SOAP-based APIs
in order to author and navigate topic maps. There are many
opportunities to leverage the "self-descriptive" and
extensible nature of existing XML vocabularies to allow
hypermedia documents to completely describe the interaction
with a Topic Maps implementation.
Additionally, unlike the Web, such a system designed to
support large-scale information sharing would need to be
designed with a way to represent the legitimacy principles and
requirements specified by each content provider. Legitimacy is
the context defining what is considered "fair" behaviour
within a community or other common environment
[WHIT03, TOWN06].
This notion of fairness can also be expressed in many
ways, but in a Topic Maps environment, it would be a good
candidate for representation using the context mechanisms
described above, and requiring that agents provide compliant
implementations of those enforcement mechanisms. Many of the
presented ideas align very well with the ideas expressed in
the discussion paper on a "Personal Data Services Model"
[BROW06].
Summary and Next Steps
In this paper we addressed questions and thoughts related to
context and large-scale information sharing through Topic Maps.
Context is critical to effective
communication, and therefore critical to creating effective
topic maps. Depending on the role to which topic maps are
assigned, two differing interpretations on context are
considered to be sensible:
-
a subjective interpretation of context is
sensible when users are engaged as active participants that
study topic maps for a greater understanding of a given
domain.
-
an objective interpretation of context is
useful when topics maps are used to capture and provide
information that supports ad-hoc queries aiming for a broader
view of a given domain.
Based on examples of usage in knowledge management, the Topic
Maps standard is an effective means for information sharing. The
requirements of information sharing would
exclude closed systems under centralized control but rather
promote a decentralized model, as present in the current World
Wide Web. However most of the current implementations of the
Topic Maps standard are proprietary systems running under a
centralized model. Many Web paradigms can be successfully
applied to existing Topic Maps implementations in order to meet
the requirements of large-scale information sharing. Hence
although Topic Maps is not able to address large-scale
information sharing directly, it might viably become a standard
for information sharing if WWW paradigms are embraced,
potentially creating "Topic Webs".
The relation between context and information
sharing was demonstrated through the conclusion that
if information sharing ought to be addressed through topic maps,
the adequate capture and representation of context is even more
important as not only is the overall information space much more
volatile but also the cultural background of users is likely to
be much more diverse.
Furthermore, Topic Maps has commercial
opportunities in the area of information sharing if
implementations become less monolithic and evolve more
independently in order to increase deployment and
interoperability through e.g. specialized products and aroud communities of use.
This is at least the promise of the Topic Maps Reference Model, that
anticipates that standards bodies will create Topic Map Applications (TMA) organized
around the needs of such communities: "The disclosure of the ontological
choices made in those TMAs will enable users across diverse
communities to effectively marshal information about subjects
indicated differently in diverse communities"
[TMRM].
It is possible that parts of the Topic Maps specifications need
to be enhanced in order for the standard to be used in
large-scale information sharing, or when attempting to capture
appropriate contextual information. Much of the presented
materials are only ideas and theories that need to be explored
and tested much more rigorously to determine their validity and
potential applicability to the target domains, bearing in mind
"the only principle of the scientific method is that experience
and observation is the sole and ultimate truth of an idea"
[FEYN05].
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Akman, V., "Rethinking context as a social construct," Journal of
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[BARQ01]
Barquin, R.C., A. Bennet, S.G. Remez (eds.), Knowledge
Management: The Catalyst for Electronic Government. Management
Concepts, Vienna, VA, 2001.
[BERN06]
Berners-Lee, T., W. Hall, J.A. Hendler, K. O'Hara, N. Shadbolt,
D.J. Weitzner, "A Framework for Web Science", Foundations and
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[BOHM80]
Bohm, D., Wholeness and the Implicate Order. 1980. Routledge Classics, London, 2002.
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[DEVL92]
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[DODIS07]
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http://www.defenselink.mil/cio-nii/docs/InfoSharingStrategy.pdf.
[FEYN05]
Feynman, R.P., ed. M. Feynman, Don't You Have Time to Think?. Penguin, London, 2005.
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Fielding, R.T., Architectural Styles and the Design of
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United States Government Accountability Office, GAO-06-385
Information Sharing: The Federal Government Needs to Establish
Policies and Processes for Sharing Terrorism-Related and
Sensitive but Unclassified Information, March 2006,
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06385.pdf.
[ISOTM]
ISO/IEC 13250:2003, Topic Maps: Information Technology -- Document Description and
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Menzel, C., "The Objective Conception of Context and Its Logic."
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[PARK03]
Park, J., S. Hunting (eds), XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using
Topic Maps for the Web. Addison-Wesley, Boston, 2003.
[PEPP00]
Pepper, S., "The TAO of Topic Maps: finding the way in the age of
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2000. http://www.gca.org/papers/xmleurope2000/papers/s11-01.html.
[PEPP02]
Pepper, S., The TAO of Topic Maps: Finding the Way in the Age of
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Senge, P.M., The Fifth Discipline. Currency Doubleday, New York, 1990.
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Tin, E., V. Akman, "Computational Situation Theory", ACM SIGART
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[TMAPI]
tmapi.org Website, http://www.tmapi.org/.
[TMDM]
ISO/IEC 13250:2006, Topic Maps: Data Model (Draft).
[TMRM]
Topic Maps Reference Model (Draft), http://www.isotopicmaps.org/TMRM/TMRM-5.0/TMRM-5.0.pdf
[TOWN05]
Townley, A., "In Search of Portable Interoperability", Insights
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[TOWN06]
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.http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/XTM-20010806.html
×
Barquin, R.C., A. Bennet, S.G. Remez (eds.), Knowledge
Management: The Catalyst for Electronic Government. Management
Concepts, Vienna, VA, 2001.
×
Berners-Lee, T., W. Hall, J.A. Hendler, K. O'Hara, N. Shadbolt,
D.J. Weitzner, "A Framework for Web Science", Foundations and
Trends in Web Science vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-130,
2006. http://www.nowpublishers.com/getpdf.aspx?doi=1800000001&product=WEB.
doi:https://doi.org/10.1561/1800000001.
×
Bohm, D., Wholeness and the Implicate Order. 1980. Routledge Classics, London, 2002.
×
Devlin, K.J., "Infons as Mathematical Objects", Minds and Machines vol. 2, no. 2,
pp. 185-201, 1992.
×
Feynman, R.P., ed. M. Feynman, Don't You Have Time to Think?. Penguin, London, 2005.
×
United States Government Accountability Office, GAO-06-385
Information Sharing: The Federal Government Needs to Establish
Policies and Processes for Sharing Terrorism-Related and
Sensitive but Unclassified Information, March 2006,
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06385.pdf.
×
ISO/IEC 13250:2003, Topic Maps: Information Technology -- Document Description and
Markup Languages.
×
Park, J., S. Hunting (eds), XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using
Topic Maps for the Web. Addison-Wesley, Boston, 2003.
×
Senge, P.M., The Fifth Discipline. Currency Doubleday, New York, 1990.
×
ISO/IEC 13250:2006, Topic Maps: Data Model (Draft).
×
Whitworth, B., A. de Moor, "Legitimate by Design: Towards Trusted
Socio-technical Systems", Behavior and Information Technoogy,
vol. 22, no. 1, pp 31-51, 2003.
doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/01449290301783.
×
TopicMaps.org (2001), XML Topic Maps,
.http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/XTM-20010806.html