Article:		Introducing SKOS
Subject:		What about Topic Maps
Date:		2005-06-23 01:59:36
From:		yitzgale
This new W3C standard obviously has a huge overlap with the very mature ISO standard Topic Maps. Topic Maps were originally conceived for (almost) exactly the same problem space as SKOS, and they are widely used. (For example, all major library cataloging software either supports Topic Maps or soon will.) However, Topic Maps proved to be more generally useful, so they are often compared and contrasted with RDF itself. The surprising difficulty of making Topic Maps and RDF work together is exactly the "extra level of indirection" mentioned by the author of this article about SKOS. It is very strange that neither this article, nor the referenced XTech paper, mentions Topic Maps. What is the relationship between SKOS and Topic Maps? How does this fit in with the work (as reported In Edd Dumbill's blog) on interoperability between Topic Maps and RDF/OWL?

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• What about Topic Maps
  2005-10-25 23:28:38 Lars Marius Garshol [Reply]
  
  The relationship between SKOS and Topic Maps is relatively straightforward: SKOS is an RDF vocabulary for representing thesauri, while Topic Maps is an ontology technology that is more-or-less equivalent to RDF itself.

  
  You can use SKOS as a Topic Maps vocabulary if you want (as described here
  http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/10.html).

  
  In the bigger picture of things, SKOS lets you represent thesauri, but Topic Maps let you go a lot further. For more detail, see
  http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tm-vs-thesauri.html
  
  

• Re: What about Topic Maps
  2005-07-04 02:05:06 Peter Mikhalenko [Reply]
  
  Hello,

  
  I do not want to rephrase a good well-known introduction of Steve Pepper on Topic Maps, which can be found at http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tao.html.

  
  SKOS uses high flexibility and descriptive power of RDF. SKOS Core provides a model for expressing the basic structure and content of concept schemes. However, as said in this introduction, relationship to other RDFS/OWL ontologies, as well as to XML Topic Maps, is still an open issue. SKOS Core allows you to model a set of concepts as an RDF graph, while most other RDF applications (FOAF) allow you to model things like people, organisations, places etc. as an RDF graph

  
  Sincerely yours,
  Peter.