Towards Seamless Knowledge

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Towards Seamless Knowledge

• Integrating Public Sector Portals in Norway

Topic MapsPublished SubjectsTMRAP
Steve Pepper Chief Strategy Officer,
Ontopiapepper_at_ontopia.net
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Introduction

• Steve Pepper
• Convenor of ISO Topic Maps committee
• Editor of XML Topic Maps 1.0 (XTM)
• Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Ontopia
• Ontopia
• The Oracle of Topic Maps
• A vendor of Topic Maps software products
• The Ontopia Knowledge Suite (OKS)
• The Omnigator and the Omnirapper
• This presentation
• Seamless Knowledge
• The Advent of Semantic Portals in Norway
• Published Subjects
• Topic Rapping with TMRAP

On'topia, 1999.f. Gr. onto- (being) Gr.
topos (place) see -IA.I. An imaginary world
in which knowledge is well organized.II. A
company that provides tools to help you realize
your own Ontopia.
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What is Topic Maps?

• Topic Maps is an ISO standard for Knowledge
  Integration
• It is the only international standard for
  Knowledge Integration
• But the more important question is

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What are Topic Maps used for?

• Thats like asking What are relational databases
  used for?
• The answer is A whole number of things,
  including(but not limited to)
• Organizing large bodies of information
• Capturing corporate memory
• Representing complex rules and processes
• Supporting concept-based eLearning
• Enabling Enterprise Knowledge Integration (EKI)
• But in particular
• Any or all of the above, in combination!
• Topic Maps lets you achieve Seamless Knowledge

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Seamless Knowledge

• General business problem addressed by Topic Maps
• The disconnectedness of Information and Knowledge
• Seamless Knowledge
• A term coined within the Topic Maps community to
  describe the business benefits of applying Topic
  Maps
• There is growing awareness of the scale of this
  problem
• Increased talk about metadata, taxonomies,
  ontologies, and semantics
• The META Group talks of a near-impending crisis
• What people are looking for is knowledge
  integration i.e., Seamless Knowledge
• Topic Maps offers a standards-based solution
• Seamless Knowledge is not the same as the
  Semantic Web
• But there is some overlap and even more potential
  synergy

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Semantic Portals

• One of many applications of Topic Maps
• Topic Maps is an ideal model for portals and
  other forms of web-based information delivery
• The basic concept is to have the topic map drive
  the portal
• Not just a navigational layer on top of something
  else
• The very structure of the portal is a topic map
• All content is organized around topics
  (subject-centric organization)
• Each page represents a topic (we call this a
  Topic Page)
• Topics act as points of collocation
• They provide a one-stop shop for everything
  that is known about a particular subject
• Navigating the portal Navigating the topic map
• Associations provide very intuitive navigation
  (As we may think)

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A Topic Page
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Architecture of a Topic Maps Portal
topicmapappli-cation
topicmap
web server
users
web client
data and documents
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The Rise and Rise of Semantic Portals in Norway

• In Norway, this concept has been put into
  practice on a scale that is now verging on the
  industrial
• There are over a dozen topic map-driven portals
  in production
• More are on the way
• And while the rest of the world is asking
  questions like
• Metadata? Taxonomies? Ontologies?
• in Norway, customers are saying Topic Maps!
• RfPs regularly specify Topic Maps as a
  requirement
• Headhunters are looking for Topic Maps experts
• 120 people attended the last Topic Maps Congress
  (Norway pop. 4 million)
• Topic Maps are quickly moving from early
  adopter to early majority
• How did this situation come about?
• The presence of Ontopia was important, but not
  enough on its own
• We needed a high visibility success story as well

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The ITU Story (in brief)

• Once upon a time, not long ago (in late 2000),
• the Network for IT Research and Competence in
  Education (ITU) was planning a new web site
• They had rather special requirements
• Relationships between objects and various groups
  of objects offer users multiple paths to the same
  content and stimulate cross-site content
  exploration.
• Visualisation of this network is supposed to
  give the user a conceptual model of the network,
  and give a feeling of being in a relational
  space.
• The consultant leading the project was Stian
  Danenbarger
• At exactly the same time, XTM 1.0 was announced
• A standardized notation used to define topics,
  and the relationships between topics... A topic
  map defines a multidimensional topic space (in
  which) locations are topics relationships
  define the path from one topic to another.
• A light bulb went on for Stian
• Ontopia helped him build an Open Source web-based
  content management and publishing system that was
  entirely driven by topic maps, called ZTM (Zope
  Topic Maps)
• and ITU got the web site it was looking for

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The success of ITU started a trend

• ITU was bleeding edge in early 2001
• Stian calls it a technical base jump without a
  parachute
• Such adventures are not for the faint-hearted
• Since then Topic Maps Portals have become a
  proven and well established technology
• at least in Norway...
• ITU was followed by web sites for the Norwegian
  Research Council, the Norwegian Consumers
  Association and many others
• Some of these are based on ZTM
• Others are based on other Topic Maps engines
• At present there are over a dozen, with more on
  the way

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Some Topic Maps Portals in Norway

• In production
• http//www.itu.nohttp//www.luna.itu.no(Ministry
  of Education)
• http//www.forskning.nohttp//www.nysgjerrigper.n
  o(Research Council of Norway)
• http//forbrukerportalen.no(Consumers
  Association)
• http//www.skifte.no(Norwegian Defence)
• http//www.hoyre.no(Norwegian Conservative
  Party)
• http//matportalen.no(Ministry of Agriculture)
• http//www.udi.no(Ministry of Justice)
• http//www.kulturnett.no(Ministry of Culture)

• Under development
• Skatteetaten(Tax Office)
• Statsministerens kontor(Office of the Prime
  Minister)
• Statistisk Sentralbyrå(Central Bureau of
  Statistics)
• IFE/Halden(Nuclear Reactor Project)
• etc.
• etc.

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Towards Seamless Knowledge

• As the number of portals multiplies, the amount
  of overlap increases
• Take these three portals as an example
• forskning.no (Research Council web site aimed at
  young adults)
• forbrukerportalen.no (Public site of the
  Norwegian Consumer Association)
• matportalen.no (Biosecurity portal of the
  Department of Agriculture)

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Genetically modified food at forskning.no
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Genetically modified food at Forbukerrådet
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Genetically modified foodstuffs at Matportalen
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Three Topic Maps Portals One Common Subject
? one virtual portal
with seamless navigation in all directions
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Towards Seamless Knowledge

• Very little is required for these portals to
  achieve a simple but effective form of Seamless
  Knowledge
• They have already achieved subject-centric
  organization of their content
• Without this, Seamless Knowledge is beyond reach
• Without this, Seamless Knowledge is beyond reach
• From a technical viewpoint, only two additional
  pieces are required to complete the puzzle
• 1 An identity mechanism
• To make it possible to know when their subjects
  are the same
• 2 An exchange protocol
• To enable information to be requested and
  exchanged automatically
• (There must also be a real desire to share
  information, but thats a political matter)

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Piece 1 The Identity Mechanism

• Simply put
• How can we know that genetically modified food
  is the same as genetically modified foodstuffs
  (or GM food, or genmodifisert mat, for that
  matter)?
• One thing is certain Basing this on names wont
  work
• Synonyms, homonyms and polysemy make names a
  minefield
• In any case we would like to multilingual
  knowledge integration
• What is needed is nothing more or less than
  unique, global identifiers for all subjects of
  common interest
• An impossible task?
• Not if we go about it the right way
• In fact, the solution already exists in the form
  of a mechanism developed as part of the Topic
  Maps standard
• That mechanism is called Published Subjects

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Published Subjects

• An open, distributed, and democratic mechanism
  for assigningunique (global) identifiers to
  arbitrary subjects
• The mechanism is based on URLs
• e.g. Ibsen Museum in Oslohttp//psi.kultur
  nett.no/museum/ibsen-museet
• Nothing special about using URLs in itself, but
• The PSI mechanism has two special
  characteristics
• It is two-sided it works for both computers and
  humans
• It works from the bottom up not from the top
  down
• Both of these are critically important
• For more information
• OASIS Published Subjects TC (http//www.oasis-open
  .org)

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Piece 2 The Exchange Protocol
Hi! Do you know the subject genetically modified
food?
The actual question wasIs the
subjecthttp//psi.forskning.no/food/gm-foodknown
in your system?
? http//matportalen.no/Matportalen/Emner/gmo
This scenario is Level 1 of TMRAP knowledge
integration.
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TMRAP (Topic Maps Remote Access Protocol)

• Abstract protocol for getting information from
  remote repositories
• The protocol has an HTTP REST binding
• A SOAP binding would be easy to do
• Any repository can support TMRAP
• For topic map applications support TMRAP is very
  easy
• For other applications its less easy, but the
  benefit is that legacy applications can be
  integrated
• The OKS currently contains a prototype
  implementation
• Used to implement the Vizigator applet
• Also used for the Omnigator Rap demo
• For a short introduction to TMRAP
• http//www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0507.htm
• Some related work
• RDF Net API http//www.w3.org/Submission/2003/SUB
  M-rdf-netapi-20031002/
• SNAPI http//sourceforge.net/projects/snapi

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The Omnigator Rap Demo (Part 1 VISIT)

• Two Omnigators are running on this machine
• Different browsers (Opera and Internet Explorer)
• Different skins (Ontopia National Colours and
  Vive Québec)
• Different names pepper poivre
• Different TMs (Italian Opera and Various
  Geographical TMs)
• They are aware of each others existence
• Their support for TMRAP is turned on

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Simulation of VISIT demo

• View Topic Page for Japan in _at_pepper
• Go to Manage page in _at_poivre and load Scripts and
  Languages
• Reload Topic Page in _at_pepper
• Links to Remote Topic Page automatically inserted
• Click on VISIT and navigate to the Topic Page in
  _at_poivre
• Go to Manage Page, load CIA World Factbook, go
  back to Japan Topic Page in _at_poivre, VISIT
  _at_pepper, note new Remote Topic Link
• etc.

etc.
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VISIT Some Considerations

• The functionality is deceptively simple, yet
  potential very powerful
• From the users point of view the VISIT links
  might have been hand-coded(there is no visible
  difference)
• The cool thing is that they are generated
  entirely automatically
• This is spontaneous knowledge federation in
  practice!!
• Think about it a bit
• Having multiple Omnigators rapping together is
  already fairly cool
• In fact, any application built with the Ontopia
  Knowledge Suite can nowjoin in the fun
• And more importantly
• So can any application at all whether or not it
  is based on Topic Maps
• The only prerequisites are
• Subject-centric organization (i.e., some concept
  of Topic Pages)
• Use of Published Subjects (for the purpose of
  subject identification)
• Support for TMRAP (in order to send and respond
  to requests)

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VISIT More Considerations

• How useful is it really?
• Isnt it a little simple-minded?
• For many of our customers it is sufficient as a
  first step
• The Norwegian Research Council and the Norwegian
  Consumers Association want to be able to link to
  each other in this way
• The VISIT paradigm enables them to retain their
  own branding
• At the same time, they offer their users an
  extremely valuable service
• TMRAP is already being implemented in ZTM
• When done, not only will the Research Council and
  the Consumers Association be able to rap
  together
• any Omnigator user will also be able to rap with
  them!
• And remember
• This game can be played by any solution that uses
  some kind ofsubject-centric organization and PSIs

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The Omnigator Rap Demo (Part 2 GET)

• But we can go a step further with relatively
  little effort
• Remember Topic Maps are designed for merging
• so we can exchange not only Topic Page URLs,
• but also fragments of content in topic map form
• We are calling those fragments topic maplets
• TMRAP also supports exchanging maplets

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Piece 3 Topic Maplets (XTM fragments)
Hi! What do you know about genetically modified
food?
The actual question wasWhat information do
have about http//psi.forskning.no/food/gm-foodi
n your system?
This scenario is Level 2 of TMRAP knowledge
integration.
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Simulation of GET demo

• View Topic Page for Japan in _at_pepper
• Go to Manage page in _at_poivre and load both
  Scripts and Languages and CIA World Factbook
• Reload Topic Page in _at_pepper
• Links to Remote Topic Pages automatically
  inserted
• Click on GET for each one and see the set of
  information be augmented by the addition of
  names, associations and occurrences from the
  remote topic maps.

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GET Some Considerations

• The functionality is even more powerful
• The seamlessness factor is much greater
• In fact we have dumbed it down in this
  Omnigator implementation in order to be able to
  show what is going on The GET functionality
  could be activated automatically
• Application areas are slightly different
• Useful when seamlessness is more important and
  branding issues less important
• E.g., within a corporate environment
• Opens up the possibility of totally
  individualized portals
• Topic Maplets
• Raises some interesting technical issues
• The most important is deciding exactly what the
  fragment should contain
• TMQL (Topic Maps Query Language) will provide
  greater flexibility

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The Building Blocks of Seamless Knowledge

• Topic Maps
• Semantically structured data that can be viewed
  as topic maps
• Without this, Seamless Knowledge is beyond reach
• By the way, this includes RDF, Relational DBs,
  XML and more
• Already here
• Published Subjects
• The Semantic Superhighway
• Globally unique identifiers for arbitrary
  subjects
• Already here
• Topic Maps Remote Access Protocol (TMRAP)
• Protocol for requesting and delivering Topic Page
  URIs and Topic Maplets
• Already here
• Topic Maps Query Language (TMQL)
• For more powerful and precise TMRAP requests
• Watch this space (and use tolog in the meantime)

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Seamless Knowledge and the Semantic Web

• Are they the same thing?
• Not if you go by the vision of the Semantic Web
  articulated by Tim Berners-Lee (e.g., in the
  famous Scientific American article)
• In reality, that amounts to AI on the Web
• Most business users today dont need AI and they
  dont want to be restricted to the Web
• On the other hand, other people have other
  visions of the Semantic Web
• In any case
• Semantics are akin to knowledge
• and seamlessness implies the existence of
  something web-like
• so in a broader sense they do have a lot in
  common
• Certainly Semantic Web data (i.e., RDF) will be
  easily reusable in the context of Seamless
  Knowledge (as will relational data and XML)
• The RDF and Topic Maps communities are currently
  working together to acheive interoperability at
  the data level (RDF/TM Interoperability Task
  Force)
• However, the TBL Semantic Web wont be here for
  many years
• There is much research still to be done
• Seamless Knowledge is achievable today
• Solving the problem of disconnected knowledge on
  a less ambitious scale

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Conclusions

• Topic Maps has almost crossed the chasm at
  least in Norway
• Web sites, Portals, E-learning, Knowledge
  Management,Enterprise Knowledge Integration,
• Seamless Knowledge is what Topic Maps is about
• Topic Maps speaks only to the technology
• CIOs are interested in business benefits and ROI
• Published Subjects are the key to solving the
  identity issue
• Anyone can create a PSI (Published Subject
  Indicator)
• PSIs work for computers AND humans
• TMRAP allows other data to be viewed as Topic
  Maps
• Provided information can be made to look like a
  topic map, any legacy technology can play
• The key is subject-centric organization of
  information
• Without this, Seamless Knowledge is beyond reach
• Without this, Seamless Knowledge is beyond reach
• Without this, Seamless Knowledge is beyond reach
• Without this, Seamless Knowledge is beyond reach
• Without this, Seamless Knowledge is beyond reach

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More Topic Maps at XML Europe 2004

• Wednesday PM
• Harding (14.45)
• Ontopias Vizigator Now you see it! (Pam
  Gennusa)
• Thursday PM
• South Cotillion (16.45)
• BrainBank Learning Building Personal Topic Maps
  as a Strategy for Learning (Stian Lavik)
• Friday AM
• Eisenhower (9.00)
• Tutorial Constraining and Querying Topic Maps
  (Steve Pepper)
• Exhibition
• Ontopia Booth 414 (with partners)
• Tuesday 17.30-19.00, Wednesday 10.30-14.00,
  15.30-19.00, Thursday 10.30-16.00