I don't understand from your description how Topic Maps solve the 
"identifying multiple versions of a standard" problem. Which was the 
original question, right?  Or have I gotten confused? I didn't think the 
original question was even about topic vocabularies, but about how to 
best provide an identifier for (eg) Marc 2.1 and another for Marc 2.2, 
while still allowing machines to ignore versions if they like and just 
request and/or identify generic "marc".  And you said that Topic Maps 
had a solution to this?

I am genuinely curious -- not neccesarily because I'm ever going to use 
Topic Maps (sorry!), but because if they have a well thought out tested 
solution to this, it could serve as a model in other contexts.

Jonathan

Alexander Johannesen wrote:
> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 18:44, Mike Taylor <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>   
>> Can't you just tell us?
>>     
>
> Sorry, but surely you must be tired of me banging on this gong by now?
> It's not that I don't want to seem helpful, but I've been writing a
> bit on this here already and don't want to be marked as spam for Topic
> Maps.
>
> In the Topic Maps world our global identificators are called PSI, for
> Published Subject Indicators. There's a few subtleties within this,
> but they are not so different from any other identificator you'll find
> elsewhere (RDF, library world, etc.) except of course they are
> *always* URIs. Now, the thing here is that they should *always* be
> published somewhere, whether as a part of a list or somewhere. The
> next thing is that they always should resolve to something (although
> the standard don't require this, however I'd say you're doing it wrong
> if you couldn't do this, even if it sometimes is an evil necessity).
>
> This last part is really the important bit, where any PSI will act as
> 1) a global identificator, and 2) resolve to a human text explaining
> what it represents. Systems can "just use it" while at the same time
> people can choose the right ones for their uses.
>
> And, yes, the identificators can be done any way you slice them. Some
> might think that ie. a PSI set for all dates is crazy as you need to
> produce identificators for all dates (or times), and that would be
> just way too much to deal with, but again, that's not an identifcation
> problem, that's a resolver problem. If I can browse to a PSI and get
> the text that "this is 3rd of June, 19971, using the whatsnot calendar
> style", then that's safe for me to use for my birthday. Let's pretend
> the PSI is http://iso.org/datetime/03061971. By releasing an URI
> template computers can work with this automatically, no frills.
>
> Now a bit more technical; any topic (which is a Topic Map
> representation of any subject, where "subject" is defined as "anything
> you can ever hope to think of") can have more than one PSI, because I
> might use the PSI http://someother.org/time/date/3/6/1971 for my date.
> If my application only understand this former set of PSIs, I can't
> merge and find similar cross-semantics (which really is the core of
> the problem this thread has been talking about). But simply attach the
> second PSI to the same Topic, and you do. In fact, both parties will
> understand perfectly what you're talking about.
>
> More complex is that the definitions of PSI sets doesn't have to
> happen on the subject level, ie. the Topic called "Alex" to which I
> tried to attach my birthday. It can be moved to a meta model level,
> where you say the Topic for "Time and dates" have the PSI for both
> organsiations, and all Topics just use one or the other; we're
> shifting the explicity of identification up a notch.
>
> Having multiple PSIs might seem a bit unordered, but it's based on the
> notion of organic growth, just like the web. People will gravitate
> towards using PSIs from the most trusted sources (or most accurate or
> most whatever), shifting identification schemes around. This is a good
> thing (organic growth) at the price of multiple identifiers, but if
> the library world started creating PSIs, I betcha humanity and the
> library world both could be saved in one fell swoop! (That's another
> gong I like to bang)
>
> I'm kinda anticipating Jonathan saying this is all so complex now. :)
> But it's not really; your application only has to have complexity in
> the small meta model you set up, *not* for every single Topic you've
> got in your map. And they're mergable and shareable, and as such can
> be merged and "fixed" (or cleaned or sobered or made less complex) for
> all your various needs also.
>
> Anyway, that's the basics. Let me know if you want me to bang on. :)
> For me, the problem the library face isn't really the mechanisms of
> this (because this is solvable, and I guess you just have to trust
> that the Topic Maps community have been doing this for the last 10
> years or so already :), however, but how you're going to fit existing
> resources into FRBR and RDA, but that's a separate discussion.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Alex
>