[sc34wg3] Topic Maps land and SAM land

[Nikita Ogievetsky]

Interestingly, if you look at who is on the opposite sides
of the debate you find mostly vendors on one side and
mostly consultants on the other.
One group says that SAM is everything (and the only thing) that
people will ever need to support if they are "Doing Topic Maps".
Second group says that Topic Maps land is much larger than
SAM land.

As I have mentioned in the other thread,
I often tell people upon reviewing their implementations:
"You know, your architecture is very close to topic maps."
I do not mean that they have occurrences and basenames explicitly spelled
out.
I mean that they have some indexed material, subjects, structured
relationships
between subjects, defined structures, etc.
Something that is representable in RM.
Then I am saying that they could benefit from adopting SAM and
using existing open source or commercial topic maps tools.

And here they are invited into the SAM land, if they choose to.
But they do not have to. Sorry, dear vendors.
But do not get upset: as times goes they may come back.
If they have a clear picture of how their knowledge representation
is mappable into RM, the easier will be migration into the SAM land.

But lets welcome everybody who speak Topic Maps :-)

--Nikita.

Nikita Ogievetsky, nogievet@cogx.com;
Cogitech Inc.        http://www.cogx.com
Topic Maps Tutorials and Consulting.
phone:  1 (917) 406 - 8734