Transcript Seamless Knowledge: Spontaneous Knowledge Federation using

Seamless Knowledge
Spontaneous Knowledge Federation using TMRAP
Steve Pepper
Lars Marius Garshol
[email protected]
[email protected]
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The Rough Guide
to African Rap
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“The revolution is right
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© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Bilingual Introduction
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My name is Steve Pepper
Je m’appelle Etienne Poivre
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Ontopia is
L’Ontopie est
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The Oracle of Topic Maps
A vendor of Topic Maps software products
Ontopia’s Products are
Les produits de l’Ontopie sont
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Convenor of ISO Topic Maps committee
Editor of XML Topic Maps 1.0 (XTM)
Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Ontopia
The Ontopia Knowledge Suite™ (OKS)
The Omnigator … and the Omnirapper
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.
This presentation is about
Cette présentation est au sujet de
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Seamless Knowledge
The Advent of Semantic Portals in Norway
Published Subjects
Topic Rapping with TMRAP
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
What is Topic Maps?
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Topic Maps is an ISO standard for Knowledge Integration
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It is the only international standard for Knowledge
Integration
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But the more important question is…
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
What are Topic Maps used for?
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That’s like asking: What are relational databases used for?
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The answer is: A whole number of things, including
(but not limited to):
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Organizing large bodies of information
Capturing corporate memory
Representing complex rules and processes
Supporting concept-based eLearning
Enabling Enterprise Knowledge Integration (EKI)
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But in particular…
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Any or all of the above, in combination!
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Topic Maps lets you achieve Seamless Knowledge
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Seamless Knowledge
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A term coined within the Topic Maps community as a “marketing banner”
– the standard under which we march (in more ways than one!)
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Instead of focusing on the technology, it speaks to the business benefits
of applying Topic Maps
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The business problem that Topic Maps addresses is the
Disconnectedness of Information and Knowledge
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There is growing awareness of the scale of this problem:
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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, or Seamless Knowledge
Topic Maps offers a standards-based solution
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(The ROI can speak for itself … at least at this conference)
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Seamless Knowledge is not the same as the Semantic Web
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But there is some overlap and even more potential synergy
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Semantic Portals
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One of many applications of Topic Maps
– Topic Maps provides an ideal model for portals and other forms of webbased information delivery
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The basic concept is to have topic maps 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-based organization”)
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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
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Navigating the portal == Navigating the topic map
– Associations provide very intuitive navigation (“As we may think”)
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
A Topic Page
the current topic
multiple names
(multiple) types
multiple
typed
occurrences
multiple
typed
associations
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Architecture of a Topic Maps Portal
topic
map
data and
documents
© 2004 Ontopia AS
topic
map
application
web server
web client
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
users
http://www.ontopia.net/
current topic
occurrences
associations
the current topic
multiple names
multiple
associations
multiple
occurrences
The Rise and Rise of Semantic Portals in Norway
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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…
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And while the rest of the world is asking questions like
– “Metadata?” “Taxonomies?” “Ontologies?”
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…in Norway, customers are saying “Topic Maps!”
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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…
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
The ITU Story (in brief)
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Once upon a time, not long ago (in late 2000), …
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… the Network for IT Research and Competence in Education (ITU) was
planning a new web site
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They had rather special requirements…
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“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’.”
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The consultant leading the project was Stian Danenbarger
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At exactly the same time, XTM 1.0 was announced:
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“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:
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
more
associations
current topic
occurrences
associations
The success of ITU started a trend
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ITU was “bleeding edge” in early 2001
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Since then Topic Maps Portals have become a proven and well
established technology
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…at least in Norway...
ITU was followed by web sites for the Norwegian Research Council, the
Norwegian Consumers Association and many others…
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Stian calls it a “technical base jump – without a parachute”
Such adventures are not for the faint-hearted
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
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Some Topic Maps Portals in Norway
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In production
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Under development
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http://www.itu.no
http://www.luna.itu.no
(Ministry of Education)
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Skatteetaten
(Tax Office)
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http://www.forskning.no
http://www.nysgjerrigper.no
(Research Council of Norway)
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Statsministerens kontor
(Office of the Prime Minister)
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Statistisk Sentralbyrå
(Central Bureau of Statistics)
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IFE/Halden
(Nuclear Reactor Project)
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etc.
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etc.
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http://forbrukerportalen.no
(Consumers Association)
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http://www.skifte.no
(Norwegian Defence)
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http://www.hoyre.no++
(Norwegian Conservative Party)
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http://matportalen.no
(Ministry of Agriculture)
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http://www.udi.no
(Ministry of Justice)
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http://www.kulturnett.no
(Ministry of Culture)
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Towards Seamless Knowledge
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As the number of portals multiplies, the amount of overlap increases…
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Take these three portals as an example:
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forskning.no (Research Council web site aimed at young adults)
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forbrukerportalen.no (Public site of the Norwegian Consumer Association)
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matportalen.no (Biosecurity portal of the Department of Agriculture)
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Genetically modified food at forskning.no
Genetically modified food at Forbukerrådet
Genetically modified foodstuffs at Matportalen
Three Topic Maps Portals – One Common Subject
 one “virtual portal”
with seamless navigation in all directions
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Towards Seamless Knowledge (part 1 of n)
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Very little is required for these portals to achieve a simple but effective
form of Seamless Knowledge
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They have already achieved subject-based organization of their
content
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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
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To make it possible to know when their subjects are the same
#2 An exchange protocol
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To enable information to be requested and exchanged automatically
(There must also be a real desire to share information, but that’s a
political matter)
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Piece #1: The Identity Mechanism
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Simply put:
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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 won’t work
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Synonyms, homonyms and polysemy make names a minefield
In any case we would like to multilingual knowledge integration
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What is needed is nothing more or less than unique, “global” identifiers
for all subjects of common interest
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An impossible task?
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Not if we go about it the right way…
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In fact, the solution already exists in the form of a mechanism
developed as part of the Topic Maps standard…
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That mechanism is called Published Subjects
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Published Subjects
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A distributed and democratic mechanism for assigning
unique, global identifiers to arbitrary subjects
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The mechanism is based on URLs
– e.g. Ibsen Museum in Oslo:
http://psi.kulturnett.no/museum/ibsen-museet
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The 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
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Both of these are critically important…
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For more information:
– http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/documents.php?wg_abbrev=tm-pubsubj
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Piece #2: The Exchange Protocol
Hi! Do you know the subject
“genetically modified food”?*
* The actual question was:
Is the subject
http://psi.forskning.no/food/gm-food
known in your system?
 http://matportalen.no/Matportalen/Emner/gmo
Sure. My URL is:
http://matportalen.no/Matp
ortalen/Emner/gmo
Portal A: forskning.no
This scenario is Level 1
of TMRAP knowledge
integration.
Portal B: Matportalen
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
TMRAP (Topic Maps Remote Access Protocol)
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Abstract protocol for getting information from remote repositories
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Any repository can support TMRAP
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Used to implement the Vizigator applet
Also used for the Omnigator Rap demo
For a short introduction to TMRAP:
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For topic map applications support TMRAP is very easy
For other applications it’s less easy, but the benefit is that legacy applications can be
integrated
The OKS currently contains a prototype implementation
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The protocol has an HTTP REST binding
A SOAP binding would be easy to do
http://www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0507.htm
Some related work:
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RDF Net API: http://www.w3.org/Submission/2003/SUBM-rdf-netapi-20031002/
SNAPI: http://sourceforge.net/projects/snapi
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
The Omnigator Rap Demo (Part 1: VISIT)
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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)
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They are aware of each other’s existence
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Their support for TMRAP is turned on
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Simulation of
VISIT demo
1. View Topic Page for
Japan in @pepper
2. Go to Manage page
in @poivre and load
Scripts and
Languages
3. Reload Topic Page in
@pepper
4. Links to Remote
Topic Page
automatically
inserted
5. Click on VISIT and
navigate to the Topic
Page in @poivre
etc.
6. Go to Manage Page,
load CIA World
Factbook, go back to
Japan Topic Page in
@poivre, VISIT
@pepper, note new
Remote Topic Link…
7. etc.
VISIT: Some Considerations
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The functionality is deceptively simple, yet potential very powerful
– From the user’s 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!!
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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 now
join 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-based 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)
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
VISIT: More Considerations
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How useful is it really?
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Isn’t it a little simple-minded?
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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
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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!
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And remember:
– This game can be played by any service that uses some kind of
subject-based organization and PSIs
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
The Omnigator Rap Demo (Part 2: GET)
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But we can go a step further with relatively little effort
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Remember: Topic Maps are designed for merging …
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… so we can exchange not only Topic Page URLs
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But also fragments of content in topic map form
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We are calling those fragments topic maplets
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TMRAP also supports exchanging maplets
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Piece #3: Topic Maplets (XTM fragments)
Hi! What do you know about
“genetically modified food”?*
* The actual question was:
What information do have about
http://psi.forskning.no/food/gm-food
in your system?
Oh, this and that.
Here you are. Be my guest!
Portal A: forskning.no
This scenario is Level 2
of TMRAP knowledge
integration.
Portal B: Matportalen
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Simulation of
GET demo
1. View Topic Page for
Japan in @pepper
2. Go to Manage page
in @poivre and load
both Scripts and
Languages and CIA
World Factbook
3. Reload Topic Page in
@pepper
4. Links to Remote
Topic Pages
automatically
inserted
5. 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.
GET: Some Considerations
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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)
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It’s also somewhat more complex than meets the eye…
– There are a number of issues related to Topic Maplets
– The most important is deciding exactly what the fragment should
contain
– There are a number of possible approaches to deciding the maplet
topology…
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Maplet Topologies
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The approach we have chosen for our initial implementation is,
for a given topic identifier, to return
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All the identifiers of corresponding topic
All of that topic’s names (including their scopes and variant names)
All its occurrences (and their scopes and types)
All associations in which it plays a role (and their scopes and types)
All players of roles in those associations (the “associated topics”)
All identifiers and one name (preferably in the unconstrained scope) for all
scoping topics, typing topics, and “associated topics”
This gives us sufficient information to provide a useful view for
the user and to be able to repeat the process incrementally
– However, more work needs to be done on XTM Fragments in general
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References:
– http://www.techquila.com/topicmapster.html
– http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/xtm-fragments.html
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
TMRAP – Abstract Protocol
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getTopicMainPage(topic identity)
– Returns XML structure with links to the Topic Page(s) for the identified
topic(s)
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getTopicXTM(topic identity)
– Returns XTM fragment (topic maplet) for the identified topic(s)
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The topic identity is the topic’s
– subject identifiers,
– source locators, and
– subject locator
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
TMRAP – HTTP Binding
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Given a base URI for a TMRAP service, you can access
– getTopicMainPage at <baseuri>topic-page with request parameters
– getTopicXTM at <baseuri>xtm-fragment
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The parameters to these requests are
– source: repeat once for each source locator
– indicator: repeat once for each subject indicator
– subject: for subject locator
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To get the Topic Page for the superclass-subclass topic from
Ontopia's online demo, go to
– http://www.ontopia.net/omnigator/plugins/viz/topicpage?indicator=http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/core.xtm#superclasssubclass
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A SOAP binding is also planned
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
TMRAP future
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Once TMQL is ready we can add a request for returning TMQL
results
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TMQL will be able to produce topic maplets as the query results
These topic maps can then be exported as XTM and returned
This allows advanced and fine-grained information retrieval
An implementation using Ontopia’s query language tolog is planned
Once TMQL-Update is ready, remote updates are also possible
– A TMQL update statement can be sent that updates the remote topic map
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Even now simple updates are possible
– An XTM upload feature would allow quite advanced additions to the topic
map
– With conventions and algorithms for controlling updates this can be used to
update, or even build, the topic map remotely
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For more information on TMQL:
– http://www.isotopicmaps.org/tmql/
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
The Building Blocks of Seamless Knowledge
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Topic Maps
– Semantically structured data that can be “viewed as topic maps”
– (By the way, this includes RDF, Relational DBs, XML and more)
– Already here
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Published Subjects
– The Semantic Superhighway
– Globally unique identifiers for arbitrary subjects
– Already here
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Topic Maps Remote Access Protocol (TMRAP)
– Protocol for requesting and delivering Topic Page URIs and Topic Maplets
– Already here
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Topic Maps Query Language (TMQL)
– For more powerful and precise TMRAP requests
– Watch this space (and use tolog in the meantime)
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Seamless Knowledge and the Semantic Web
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Are they the same thing?
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On the other hand, semantics are akin to knowledge … and
seamlessness implies the existence of something web-like
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So in a broader sense they do have a lot in common
Certainly Semantic Web data (read: RDF) will be easily reusable in the context
of Seamless Knowledge
However, the Semantic Web won’t be here for many years
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Not if you go by the vision of the Semantic Web articulated by Tim Berners-Lee
and the W3C (e.g., in the famous Scientific American article)
In reality, that amounts to AI on the Web
Most business users today don’t need AI and they don’t want to be restricted to
the Web
There is much research still to be done
Seamless Knowledge is achievable today
–
The problem of disconnected knowledge on a less ambitious scale
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Further work on TMRAP
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Extending the protocol
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Implementation in other engines
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ZTM and TM4J are the prime candidates
An extension to Joseki (Jena RDF server) would also be fun
RDBMS-driven applications are also interesting targets
Evaluating “competing” technologies
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More structured getTopicPage request
Ability to specify maplet topologies more precisely
Support for TMQL queries
JSR 168: Portlet specification (Java Community Process)
WSRP: Web Services for Remote Portlets (OASIS)
Evaluating complementary technologies
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Jabber (Open Source XML chat protocols)
JXTA (Java peer-to-peer technology)
…
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/
Conclusions
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Topic Maps have crossed the chasm – at least in Norway
– Web sites, Portals, E-learning, Knowledge Management,
Enterprise Knowledge Integration, …
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Seamless Knowledge is a more appropriate banner to march
under
– “Topic Maps” speaks only to the technology
– CIOs are interested in business benefits and ROI
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The TMRAP approach redefines what it means to be a “Topic Maps
Application”
– Provided information can be made to look like a topic map, any legacy
technology can play
– The key is subject-based organization of information
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Extreme Markup is a very cool place for extremists! 
– See you there next year!
© 2004 Ontopia AS
Extreme Markup 2004, Montréal, Québec
http://www.ontopia.net/