{"id":1801,"date":"2015-06-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-13T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wwwneu.strehle.de\/tim\/weblog\/archives\/2015\/06\/14\/1763\/"},"modified":"2015-06-14T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-13T22:00:00","slug":"1763","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/weblog\/archives\/2015\/06\/14\/1763\/","title":{"rendered":"Topic Maps (as a standard) are dead, I\u2019m afraid"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Update:<\/em> This post got some well-deserved pushback. Thanks to Patrick Durusau, Lars Marius Garshol and Jack Park for the feedback \u2013 and sorry for the controversial headline. I\u2019ve added \u201c(as a standard)\u201d and did some editing to make clear that people still use Topic Maps.]<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a fan of Topic Maps<\/a> \u2013 the very well-thought-out Topic Maps Data Model<\/a> standard with an XML serialization called XTM (XML Topic Maps)<\/a> dating back to the year 2000. (See also the Topic Maps Reference Model, TMRM<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Even as a fan, I must admit that the Topic Maps standards are dead. They have never been widely adopted, and the key contributors have long moved on. Measured by the value you expect to get out of a successful standard \u2013 good visibility, adoption, interoperability, tooling, ongoing development \u2013 Topic Maps haven\u2019t been the success we were hoping for.<\/p>\n

Steve Pepper<\/a>, who wrote the famous The TAO of Topic Maps<\/a> article, doesn\u2019t seem to be involved anymore.<\/p>\n

Lars Marius Garshol<\/a> and Graham Moore<\/a>, the editors of the Topic Maps standards, are now doing very interesting work over at Sesam<\/a>, using Semantic Web technologies like RDF.<\/p>\n

I remain convinced that Topic Maps are one of the best ways to model information. As with other things, \u201cout of fashion\u201d doesn\u2019t mean \u201cwrong\u201d. Since Topic Maps are a way of thinking about data structures, not a technology stack, they are rather timeless. Luckily, there\u2019s still users and advocates of Topic Maps. Here are some of them:<\/p>\n

Steve Pepper\u2019s former company, Ontopia<\/a>, still offers open source Topic Maps software.<\/p>\n

The Wandora<\/a> people who continue to work on a free Java desktop Topic Maps application.<\/p>\n

Kamala<\/a> is a commercial Topic Maps cloud app.<\/p>\n

Robert Cerny<\/a>, maker of the Topincs<\/a> Topic Maps engine.<\/p>\n

Johannes Schmidt<\/a> released a new PHPTMAPI<\/a> version last year.<\/p>\n

Patrick Durusau<\/a> keeps blogging tons of interesting links on Another Word For It<\/a>, often adding a Topic Maps twist.<\/p>\n

Jack Park<\/a> makes Topic Map software in node.js and Java.<\/p>\n

Motomu Naito<\/a> (Naito-san) runs the Japanese Topic Maps space<\/a> site.<\/p>\n

See also the Topic Maps Community<\/a> on LinkedIn.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure whether Kal Ahmed<\/a> and Steve R. Newcomb<\/a> are still working with Topic Maps.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll keep using Topic Maps (and building a TM engine<\/a>), but for interoperability with the rest of the world, I\u2019ll use RDF (as XML or JSON-LD) instead.<\/p>\n

Please let me know if I\u2019m wrong, or if anyone\u2019s missing from this list of people who still actively support Topic Maps!<\/p>\n

Update (2017-01-03):<\/em> Michel Laglasse<\/a> keeps actively developing (since 2003!) the Goozzee<\/a> Topic Maps software.<\/p>\n

Update (2017-06-27):<\/em> Brett Kromkamp develops TopicDB<\/a>, \u201ca Python topic map-based graph library\u201d.<\/p>\n

Update (2017-06-27):<\/em> Michel Biezunski \u2013 Topic Maps Now<\/a>: \u201cThe notions of topic mapping are still useful, even if they need to be adapted to new methods and systems. Furthermore, this flexibility in itself is a guarantee that they are still going to be relevant in the long term. [\u2026] The success was somewhat limited, and use of Topic Maps seems to be declining, which seems surprising given the fact that many web sites are organized around topics. Most of these tools are no longer maintained, and the activity in the ISO standard working group has decreased accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Update: This post got some well-deserved pushback. Thanks to Patrick Durusau, Lars Marius Garshol and Jack Park for the feedback \u2013 and sorry for the controversial headline. I\u2019ve added \u201c(as a standard)\u201d and did some editing to make clear that people still use Topic Maps.] I\u2019m a fan of Topic Maps \u2013 the very well-thought-out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weblog"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}