Cogitative Technologies

David Silverman, Nikita Ogievetsky and Walter Perry invite you to participate in 2010 meeting of New York XML Special Interest Group on Monday, March 8 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
The meeting is hosted by Morgan Stanley at 1585 Broadway, 6th floor.
Michel Biezunski and Steven R. Newcomb, pioneers of the ISO Topic Maps standard, will share their experience applying Topic Map concepts to design and implementation of Tax Map in IRS since 2001.
To reserve a place for this meeting, please send an email request to mailto:wperry@xml-sig.org; the space is limited, you will receive a confirmation by return email.
We look forward to a large and enthusiastic group on March 8th.

Nikita Ogievetsky and Walter Perry invite you to participate in the resurrection of the New York XML Special Interest Group. We will meet Wednesday 9 May from 7 to 9 p.m. at 1 New York Plaza in downtown Manhattan (map directions below). The topics of this meeting will be the Universal Business Language, version 2.0 and the management of code lists (controlled vocabularies). If you have not had a good look at this standard, we urge you to check out that link as well as Jon Bosak's comments from XML2006 and, of course, to attend the SIG meeting on May 9th. The presenters for the May 9th meeting will be Ken Holman and Tony Coates. We are delighted, and grateful, that they have both volunteered their expertise toward what we confidently expect will be the enthusiastic re-start of the New York XML SIG. Bios of both presenters and abstracts of their talks are attached below. We are also grateful to Morgan Stanley for providing space and sponsorship for our group. To reserve a place for this meeting, please send an email request to mailto:wperry@xml-sig.org You will receive a confirmation by return email. We look forward to a large and enthusiastic group on May 9th.

Celular automata implemented in SVG.

This presentation is an overview for the eGovernment:

Cogitative Topic Map web sites (CTW) framework
Tabular Topic Maps framework
Semantic Web Glasses
Contextual Topic Map Constraints and Concurrent Characteristics Expressions

This presentation shows how we used Topic Map based solutions to build, organize and maintain Kodak digital cameras accessories web site. The chosen approach did not require software investment. Excel, available and familiar spreadsheet software, served as an affordable and easy to use Topic Map GUI editor and repository.

>Excel worksheets represent different plains of relationships that are completely independent until the processing begins. An initial set of topic map documents is generated from applicable worksheets and by spidering a corpus of XML content files. Topic maps are merged based on the topic naming constraint or subject merging rule. Finally, XSLT drives generation of JHTML server pages, SVG and SQL scripts from Topic Map source code (CTW framework). We also show how we used Topic Map Ontology schema to calculate the difference between two Topic Map documents. This is also XSLT-driven. The difference topic map controls which web pages should be updated, which lowers server load and improves performance.

Because the framework is Topic Map based it was very easy to satisfy new requirements and add new planes of relationships.

This presentation shows how an arbitrary Topic Map document can be translated into an RDF representation so that it can be validated against a DAML-OIL ontology. Layered approach allows using DAML for Topic Map validation. We introduce notion of Contextual Topic Map Constraints and Concurrent Characteristics Expressions We go beyond DAML and introduce notions of Contextual Topic Map Constraints and Concurrent Characteristics Expressions.

This presentation shows how standard spreadsheet software, such as Excel, can be used as an enterprise Topic Map repository and an affordable and easy to use Topic Map GUI editor. We show our framework conventions for representing vocabularies, topic characteristics (occurrences, associations, and base names), characteristics, scopes, and other Topic Map constructs. This framework was used to build, organize and maintain Kodak’s ‘Digital Camera Accessories’ web site. Excel worksheets represent different planes of relationships that are independent until the processing begins. Transformation flow is controlled by instructions within the Excel workbook.

(See http://swglasses.com/aspen/pilot.asp for an example - it goes across five books, using two types of indexes – BOB & TOC; topics across different books are related with “similar”, “see also”, “contained”, “sub-class”, etc. associations; drag and drop topics to the right side bar and click on “New Aspen Answer Book” link – this is a way to build a customized publication).

This presentation describes a solution developed at Aspen Publishers which uses Topic Maps technology for multidimensional indexing and classification of content across various products and publications. The topic map approach combines all the indexes, tables of contents, glossaries and referenced materials from all books in the series into a single multidimensional index. Using topic map associations, the entries in one book’s index can be related to other entries, as well as to entries in the other books’ indexes, glossaries, tables of contents and so on, as well as to external referenced materials, such as IRS publications or websites. The topic map graph is used for navigation and, most importantly, content repurposing and building new and customized publications.

This recipe (11.4) of XSLT Cookbook explains how to use XSLT in order to visualize and publish knowledge expressed in the Topic Map. It shows how how to apply CTW concepts to generate a browsable web site from the Topic Map source code.

HTML offers excellent ways to deliver browsable information via the Web. As a web site grows and turns into a web portal, developers are faced with growing challenges of enforcing link integrity and maintaining an enterprise look-and-feel standards and navigational order. Tasks that once were simple can turn into laborious and convoluted processes as the information resource base of the site expands. However, enterprise web site maintenance can be robust and straightforward. This chapter (#9) shows that using Topic Map as the "source code" or "sitemap" of a website offers convenience, power, reliability, and rapid reconfigurability to the maintainers of large, complex websites.

This presentation describes application of Topic Maps concepts to building Adaptive Classifiers. Classification expressed in Topic Maps enables to maintain rich multi - hierarchical indexes and establish vertical and horizontal associations on all levels. The demonstration includes image browser able to represent rich taxonomy of professional graphics. Demo application enables browsing faceted taxonomy of Art images. It accommodates different perspectives via add-hock navigation patterns.

This presentation describes Cogitech's Cogitative Web Sites (CTW) content publishing framework that uses Topic Maps and XSLT. It shows how one can easily integrate two different CTW Web Sites by simply merging their source Topic Maps. Source Topic Map aggregates content from the universe of WWW resources, and, at the same time, dynamically governs website navigation and site map.

topics generate web pages
occurrence and association types control format and layout of content building blocks
scope controls content visibility

This presentation describes new approach that result in a more compact Topic Maps representation. Quantum Topic Maps leverage DAML-OIL to enrich Topic Maps expressiveness. In addition, one can use freely available DAML-OIL validators to validate Topic Maps expressed in QTM format. Presentation describes "Quantum" effects in Topic Maps and outlines Quantum Topic Maps Processing Model derived from TMPM4.

This presentation describes XTM to RDF translator (XTM2RDF), which is now available online. It uses XSLT to translate topic map documents expressed in the XTM syntax into RDF. The translation process respects the TMPM4 parsing model for XTM. XTM2RDF supports inner and external traversals in RDF and XTM documents. XTM2RDF Translator XTM-enable RDF applications; on the other end, topic maps community can use RDF graph visualizers to view topic map graphs.

Presentation discusses principals and techniques for harvesting XML Topic Maps.
In particular XSLT transformation from PRISM into XTM is considered.

Collection of XTM 1.0 documents and XSLT scripts for updating ISO Topic Map documents to the XTM 1.0 syntax. Original ISO Topic Map documents were donated to the public domain by InfoLoom, Ontopia, Kal (Techquila), Empolis and Cogitech

This presentation describes building web applications with XML Web Applications Template Library (XWATL). XWATL is a web content publishing system. It separates the publishing process into four layers:

object description and business logic (XML)
site map and navigation (XLink)
database API (XSLT)
layout and formatting (XSLT)

Using these four layers ultimately simplifies and streamlines the entire process. XWATL is OS-independent and can support almost any programming language. Several examples are provided.

The presentation introduces one of the first real-life XLink applications: XML Web Application Template Library.

This template library and the framework it uses demonstrates how XSLT can be used to facilitate the building and maintenance of dynamic web sites using XML templates to control data structures, extended XLinks to serialize sitemaps, and XSLT for controlling screen layouts and the database APIs.

HTML and server-side scripts are generated dynamically at run-time by applying XSLT transformations to the XML templates. Generated scripts are further executed with python:exec(), ECMAScript eval(), etc. methods.