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Putting Topic Maps to

REST

David Damen, Maria Patrickson

Putting Topic Maps to REST September 30th 2010

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What did we want?

• Remote access:
– Manipulate topic maps
– Manipulate topics
– Search

• RESTful

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What is out there?

• TMRAP:
– Part of Ontopia
– Limited in functionality
– Not exactly RESTful

• Topincs:
– Better in functionality, but not entirely

• TMIP:
– Built on top of path expression Topic Maps query language
– Complicated

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Resources Representations

REST

Self-descriptive
HATEOAS
messages

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HATEOAS
• Hypermedia As The Engine Of Application State

– RESTful webapp should be modelled as a state machine

– Client transitions from state to state

– Representations contain valid state transitions

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HATEOAS – online book store

Add payment
• Book 1 information • Shipping
• Book 2 • Credit card method
• Book 3 • Address • Gift options
Confirm
Fill basket
order

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REST

Topic
Maps
engine Tropics

Community
support

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Tropics – resources
• Topic Maps

• Topics

• Associations

• Query results

IRIs as item identifiers

IRIs as occurrences in a navigation ontology

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Tropics – identifying resources

• /topics/earth

• /topics/earth?ti=/topicmaps/astronomy

• /topics/earth?ti=/groups/space

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Tropics – representations
• As a Topic Map:
– XTM 2.0/2.1
– CXTM
– JTM

• Other formats can support most (but not all) resources:

– CTM
– LTM

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Tropics – messages
• HTTP:
– GET
– PUT
– POST
– DELETE

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Tropics - HATEOAS
• Application state in a Topic Maps engine?

• What is a Topic Maps engine is used for?

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Tropics - HATEOAS
• Information extraction:
– Querying
– Navigation

• Application state for a Topic Maps engine:

– The piece of information retrieved

• State transition for a Topic Maps engine client:

– Traversal from one piece of information to the next
– Querying
– Administrative functions

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Knowledge navigation – example

Celestial
Body

Planet Sattelite

Planet Star

Mars

ATLAS
Mars

Earth

Earth picture
Sun

weight weight

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Knowledge navigation – intra Topic Map navigation

Celestial
Body

Planet Sattelite

Planet Star

Mars

ATLAS
Mars

Earth

Earth picture
Sun

weight weight

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Knowledge navigation – extra Topic Map navigation

Celestial
Body

Planet Sattelite

Planet Star

Mars

ATLAS
Mars

Earth

Earth picture
Sun

weight weight

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Knowledge navigation – merged Topic Map navigation

Celestial Earth
Body
weight
picture Planet Sattelite

Planet Star

Mars

ATLAS
Mars

Earth

Earth picture
Sun

weight weight

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Tropics – navigation ontology

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Tropics – example – Earth Topic

Create
Topic
Parameter

Planet

Link
query

Earth
alias
query
weight Search the alias
q
engine
data
type Xsd:string
uri
http://.../search

method
GET

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Tropics – Is HATEOAS worth it?

• Open question…

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Tropics – proposed URI space

• /topicmaps/{id}
• /groups/{id}
• /topics/{id}
• /associations/{id}
• /search

• Query/filter parameters
• Versioning

=> More detailed info in the API definition at http://j.mp/tropics-api

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Tropics – current status

• /topicmaps – GET
• /topicmaps/{id} – GET, PUT
• /groups/all – GET
• /topics – GET (only ‘has-type’)
• /topics/{id} - GET
• /search - GET (supports ‘tolog’)

• (Will be) part of Ontopia Sandbox

• Open for participation!

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Acknowledgement
• Tropics:
• David Damen
• Maria Patriksson

This work has received funding from the European Commission through the
Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under the Space Theme, under
grant agreement n◦218815 within the ULISSE Project (USOCs KnowLedge
Integration and Dissemination for Space Science Experimentation).

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Questions?

Thank you for your time!

Putting Topic Maps to REST September 30th 2010