NYCPHP Meetup

[Christopher Hendry]

Thought some might be interested in this - I've been to a number of their
meetings, with mixed results - depending on the topic:

-----Original Message-----
From: Walter Perry [mailto:wperry at xml-sig.org]
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2003 12:31 PM
Subject: XML SIG 16 Sept -- Sam Hunting on new developments in Topic
Maps


Greetings XML Special Interest Group. We begin our sixth (!) year of
meetings this month. Goldman Sachs will continue to provide the
facilities without which our meetings would not be feasible. I am most
grateful for that, and to all of the Goldman people who have worked with
us to make these SIG meetings possible. Our 'home' in the training
center at 125 Broad Street has now been closed, however, and the regular
venue for our meetings will be the Goldman Sachs Training Center on the
31st Floor at 180 Maiden Lane. Please note this change. I'll look
forward to seeing many of you at meetings this year.

The next meeting of the XML Special Interest Group will be Tuesday, 16
September, 7-9 p.m., hosted by Goldman Sachs at 180 Maiden Lane, 31st
Floor.

Our speaker will be Sam Hunting, presenting his perspective on the
latest developments in Topic Maps. One point which Sam emphasizes is the
formal rigor that compliance with ISO 13250 introduces to topic map
implementations. Questions of such formally demonstrable capability seem
to be recently more numerous and insistent, as, e. g. the XML-DEV thread
late last month on whether XML vocabularies are at an advantage or
disadvantage versus the apparent formal rigor of the relational model.
Sam writes:

The latest on Topic Maps: Hard thinking, actual clients, new and better
tools

The talk is a tour d'horizon of current topic map technologies:

    * Theory as mathematical model
    * Practice at the USGS
    * New free tools

Theory of topic maps will present--for the first time--a set-theoretic
mathematical formalism for topic maps, developed by Neill Kipp with
Steve Newcomb and Sam Hunting. This work is important from a technical
perspective, since such a formalism can ensure that developers of topic
map standards and implementations are "all on the same page" with
respect the meaning of the text of ISO 13250. From a marketing
perspective, the work means that, for the first time, topic mappers can
claim formal rigor with the same force that proponents of the relational
model can.

Practice of topic maps will present--again, for the first time--the
prototype of the topic map system developed for the United States
Geological Survey by eTopicality, Inc. The USGS has requirements that
can be met only by an implementation of the topic map paradigm: A
federated system that permits free navigation between multiple,
overlapping taxonomies. The implementation to be presented is the first
step toward this goal: It is a topic map that implements a "subject
catalog" for USGS holdings on coastal and marine geology data that
allows entries into the catalog to be edited, all using open source
software and an ordinary browser.

New tools for topic maps will showcase--again, for the first time--the
newest release from the GooseWorks project, tmtk-0.8. This open source
toolkit permits people to create Topic Map Applications (TMAs) using a
simple XML DTD. The Standard Application Model developed by
TopicMaps.Org ("XTM") is one such application, but others may be
necessary to serve client needs. XTM, for example, permits addressing
only by URI, but other forms of addressing may be required: Library of
Congress subject headings, astronomical coordinates, latitude and
longitude, etc.

Sam Hunting is the president of eTopicality, Inc., a consultancy whose
service offerings include topic maps, content analysis, and taxonomy and
DTD development. He was a founding member of TopicMaps.Org, which
developed the XML Topic Maps (XTM) specification. He is a co-author of
the XTM 1.0 DTD. He is the technical editor of _XML Topic Maps: Creating
and Maintaining Topic Maps for the Web_, from Addison-Wesley. He is a
co-founder of the GooseWorks project for creating open source topic map
tools (http:/www.gooseworks.org). He has been working with markup
technology for over 10 years. (http://www.etopicality.com)

To reserve a place at this meeting, or to subscribe to our email list
for announcement of future meetings, please send a request by email
direct to me mailto:wperry at xml-sig.org. You will receive a confirmation
by return email. Security requires that those attending this meeting be
registered at least a day in advance so that their names are available
to check against attendance at the door. Please register before Monday,
15 September, to insure that you will be admitted.


Walter Perry
XML SIG Leader