NetworkedPlanet
Topic Maps in
‘Not working on the web shock!’

TMCore OKS
Web Service Web Service
<topic id=“gra”>
<identity href=“” />
<assoc …>
<rolespec><player
href=“http://okstoopics.com/t1”

TMCore OKS
TMDM has no way to reliably expose a
web address for a topic.
Item identifiers are there, but not in
serialisation and in the model you
don’t know which ones are web
addressable

The topicRef element type refers to a topic, either within the same XML
document or externally. The signficance of the topic reference depends on the
context. The element type is declared as follows:
topicRef = element topicRef { href } The href attribute contains the absolute or
relative IRI reference that is the topic reference. This IRI reference shall have a
fragment identifier which shall be what [W3C XPointer] calls a shorthand
pointer (formerly barename).
During deserialization a locator is produced from the topicRef element
according to the rules in 4.3.3. If the data model has a topic item whose
[subject identifiers] or [item identifiers] properties contain an equal locator
that topic item is the one produced by this topicRef element. If no such topic
item exists, a topic item is created, and the locator added to its [item
identifiers] property. That topic item is then the one produced by this topicRef
element.

Some ideas:
1. Extend the tmdm / syntax to have a new collection of web addresses
2. Have a subject identifier convention something like:
urn:topicmap:www.oks.com/topics/454
Where to resolve we can replace urn:topicmaps with http://
3. Do the same but with itemidentifiers and say this wont work with xtm 1.0
I want to be able to have a topic stub that I can look at and KNOW which
identifiers are ACTUALLY addresses that I can go:
GET someurl
Mimetype/accept: XTM, JSON, LTM etc
And get back the ‘right thing’