Where to start (was: Ontology for Dummies)

[Steve Pepper]

At 14:00 02/10/02 +0100, Tony Linde wrote:
>I don't want to spark an OntoWar,

Good, because I for one wouldn't participate :-)

>but could people (participants and
>lurkers alike) say if there is any significant difference between a
>topic map approach to ontologies and an OWL (or its ancestors') language
>approach.

There are differences, but I don't believe they are significant for the
VO work at this stage. Although Ontopia is a topic map company, our
philosophy is to look for synergies; for example, we often use RDF in
combination with topic maps. The reason we can do so is because we use
published subjects to establish semantics in a manner that works across
various formalisms.

For those that are interested, I have tried to summarize some thoughts
on the relationship between topic maps and RDF in my "Ten Theses on Topic
Maps and RDF" at

   http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/rdf.html

Steve

--
Steve Pepper, Chief Executive Officer <pepper at ontopia.net>
Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34/WG3  Editor, XTM (XML Topic Maps)
Ontopia AS, Waldemar Thranes gt. 98, N-0175 Oslo, Norway.
http://www.ontopia.net/ phone: +47-23233080 GSM: +47-90827246