1 / Who am I?

• eTopicality, Inc.
  • www.etopicality.com
  • Sam Hunting: shunting@etopicality.com
• Standards participation
  • Co-author, XTM 1.0 DTD; TopicMaps.Org founding member
  • ISO participant
• Topic map collaborations
  • With Jack Park, technical editor of Topic Maps, forthcoming from Addison-Wesley.
  • Co-founder, with Jan Algermissen, of www.goose-works.org, for open source topic map tools.

2 / Acronyms and Roadmap

• GFKI:
  • Global Federated Knowledge Interchange
  • What is GFKI? Why GFKI?
• pIRM:
  • proposed ISO Reference Model for topic maps
  • What is pIRM? How does pIRM enable GFKI?
• GwTk:
  • GooseWorks ToolKit for topic map information processing
  • Free, open source
  • GFKI in action, using pIRM

3 / What is Global Federated Knowledge Interchange?

• A teleology
  • That toward which we strive, in topic map land
  • The Holy Grail, the Pot of Gold, the goose that lays the golden eggs
• A (set of)technology(ies)
  • Some based on the heritage of “our” civilization
  • Others based on computation

4 / GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI: Global

• Ubiquity
  • “A topic map within arm's reach of desire.”
• Propinquity
  • “Urge to merge”
• Equity
  • “Show me the money!”
    • Information assets on the balance sheet

5a / GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI: Federated (a)

• Federated systems based on two document types:
  • Constitution (the state)
  • Contracts (civil society)
• Instances of each formally define rights and obligations:
  • Citizens (in relation to the state)
  • Parties to contracts (in relation to each other)
• In topic map land, we too have these document types:
  • Constitution: Rules for assertions (pIRM)
  • Contracts: Constraints on associations (SAM and other AMss)

5b / GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI: Federated (a)

• Two cultural characteristics of federalism:
  • No monopoly on truth (neither in constitutions nor contracts)
  • Reserved powers (to Europeans, principle of subsidiarity)

6 / GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI: Knowledge Interchange

• I don't “know” what knowledge is:
  • Like (almost) everyone else
  • ... mathematical formula -- huh?
• But that doesn't matter:
  • I can agree with someone else to interchange it anyhow
  • Agreement is a “satisficing” process:
  • Negotiated compromise
  • Contractually based (i.e., persistent record of agreement)
  • Creates equity when interchanged (e.g., arbitrage, good will, credit-worthiness)

7 / GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI: Summary:

• Objectives: global
  • ubiquity, propinquity, equity
• Principles: federated
  • constitutions and contracts
• Application: knowledge interchange
  • actual contracts

8 / GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI: How does pIRM enable GFKI?

• For pIRM, a topic map is:
  1. a set of assertions,
  2. about subjects,
  3. possibly in scope(s)
• Therefore, information that:
  1. makes assertions,
  2. about subjects,
  3. possibly in scope(s)
• Conveys “inherent topic map information.”
  • "If it walks like a duck..."
  • DocBook, ebXML, .NET ...

9 / GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI: Example of inherent topic map information

        <myDoc>
            <employment>
                <employer>eTopicality</employer>
                <employee>Sam Hunting</employee>
            </employment>
            <person>
                <name>Robert S. Hunting</name>
                <citizenship>United States of America</citizenship>
            </person>
            <son>Sam Hunting</son>
            <mother>Constance Hunting</mother>
        </myDoc>
    

10 / GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI: Omnivorous with respect to markup

• pIRM: Constitution
  • Specifies formal (i.e., computable) rules
  • for the fundamental structure of topic map information
  • Stable addressing
• (S)AM(s): Contracts
  • Specify(ies) formal (i.e., computable) constraints
  • Optimize for certain association types
    • That represent assertions
• Example:
  • Subject Based Merging Rule
  • Topic Name-based Merging Constraint

11 / GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI: Contract (a)

• Preconditions
  • I cut the cake
• Postconditions
  • You pick the first slice
• Invariant
  • The quantity of cake
• Sources:
  • Bertrand Meyer, Object Oriented Software Construction, Second Edition
  • Sam Hunting, Extreme Markup, Montreal 1998 and current Markup Technologies
  • Annex F of the XTM 1.0 specification by Kal Ahmed and Graham Moore

12 / GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI: Contract (b)

• Preconditions
  • Event(s) in datastream (SAX-like, can be expressed in XPath syntax)
• Postcondition(s)
  • Levy demands on the (pIRM) graph builder:
  • Subject association, or
  • Subject equivalence event (eliminate redundancy)
• Invariant
  • Inherent topic map information is conserved

13 / GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI: Contract example:

<clause>
    <preconditions>
        <and>
            <assertion>
            startElement employment
            </assertion>
        </and>
    </preconditions>
    <postconditions>
        <AND>
            <demand signal="startTemplate">
                <PSI>
                http://etopicality.com/test.html#employment
                </PSI>
            </demand>
            <demand signal="role">
                <PSI>
                http://etopicality.com/test.html#employer
                </PSI>
            </demand>
            <demand signal="role">
                <PSI>
                http://etopicality.com/test.html#employee
                </PSI>
            </demand>
            <demand signal="endTemplate"/>
            <demand signal="startAssociation"/>
        </AND>
    </postconditions>
</clause>

14 / GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI: Answering the age old markup questions

• What do the tags mean?
  • Their meanings are determined by PSIs
  • Absent PSIs, the tag name is a rhetorical device
    • Not that there's anything wrong with that!
• What does nested containment mean?
  • Its meaning is determined by the association events it gives rise to

15 / GwTk (www.etopicality.com) -> pIRM -> GFKI: Contractually based GFKI

16 / GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI: GooseWorks ToolKit

• Open source toolkit:
  • linux philosophy of small tools piped together
  • DLLs later
• Implements the pIRM rules and SAM constraints:
  • As expressed by “TMPM4” at www.topicmaps.net, copy submitted to ISO
• Newest release:
  • Performance improvements
  • Persistent store (CPAN 28,000 associations)
  • Python wrapper
  • Improved sTMQL
  • Bigger test suite

17 / GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI: Contract-based GFKI using pIRM

./driver.py input.xml output.xtm

18 / PostScript: Managing my IP with GwTk

• Nothing helps me manage my IP.
• The entire computing universe impedes me!
  • I have to maintain:
    • email
    • bookmarks
    • the entire file system where I am doing what the computer should be doing (organizing bits) and the computer is NOT doing what it should be doing (organizing associated subjects in scopes)
  • And after all that I can't interchange it.
  • It's a tax on my time!
• Enter topic maps.

19 / PostScript: Managing my IP with GwTk

• Rather than build a GUI or a big application:
  • The linux style
  • A little python code
  • What's wrong with the command line, anyhow?

20 / PostScript: Managing my IP with GwTk

[shunting@localhost gwsh]$ ./gwsh.py /home/shunting/gwsam/gwsh/maps/test.xtm
>
 > GwTk topic map shell
>
>help
 
Documented commands (type help ):
========================================
adda            alias           aliasdel        aliasmod        chmod
chown           cm              color           cs              grep
groupadd        groupdel        groupmod        h               la
lalias          lax             lb              lc              li
lm              lo              lra             lrp             lsc
lxa             mrg             nn              pfu             pick
pnt             psm             pwm             pws             su
unmrg           useradd         userdel         usermod         uws
va              vm              whoami          xm              xs
 
Miscellaneous help topics:
==========================
README
>

21 / Conclusion

• GFKI
  • ubiquity, propinquity, equity
• pIRM -> GFKI
  • Constitution (pIRM)
  • Contracts (AM)
• GwTk -> pIRM -> GFKI
  • Here today!