1. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
1
Sixth International Conference on Topic Maps Research and Applications – TMRA 2010
Leipzig, 29 September – 1 October 2010
Gerhard E. Weber, Ralf Eilbracht, Stefan Kesberg
Nexxor GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany, www.nexxor.de
Topic Maps for subject-centric publishing
from document-centric content management systems –
a case study on a website of a regional cluster of companies

2. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
Unternehmen
2Problem statement
document-centric CMS high costs of linking documents
editors need to know which documents to link
Unternehmen
many pages information relevant for a particular subject in many pages
few links related subjects in different documents as isolated texts
user has to read many pages to connect the dots
= restricted usability of content
+

3. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
Unternehmen
3Suggested solution
subject centrism offer subjects networked by knowledge models
instead of isolated text fragments in documents
Unternehmen
many perspectives render views of subjects not just of documents
include relational views automatically generated from underlying graph
many access paths offer many access paths to users‘ target views
rather than a few hierarchical navigation structures
Topic Maps-driven as access layers „on top“ of document-centric CMS
frontends
increased usability
+
+
+
=

4. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
4Anwendungsbeispiel
What is it? website of a cluster of some 250 biotech and medtech companies
in metropolitan area of Stuttgart, and to its south
cluster management company funded by regional administrative unitsWho creates it?
URL www.bioregio-stern.de
cluster members, cluster managers,
other interested parties looking for customers, partners, experts
Who uses it?
company profiles, project participations, news, eventsContent
Website of regional cluster of biotech companies

5. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
5AnwendungsbeispielThe old document-centric web app…
navigation
company infos
menu bar
search fulltext
overview one alphanumerically sorted table
with company names and focus descriptions
alphabetical paging
each company one page with data on focus, profile, address,
management, contact, year founded, etc.
without links to related information

6. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
6Anwendungsbeispiel
Companies located in a particular city, county, or higher administrative unit?
Members in Stuttgart, county Zollernalbkreis, district Tübingen?
Cities or other administrative units represented in the cluster, and by what companies?
Companies related to particular field of activity in a particular administrative unit?
Diagnostics in county Zollernalbkreis?
Focus on a particular company:
other companies headquartered in the same county?
other companies with the same fields of activity?
other participants of the same projects?
… did not enable users to see the connections

7. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
7Topic Map creation Anwendungsbeispiel
Data source XML dump provided by webservice from CMS
spreadsheet file describing fields of activities
Ontology creation minimal ontology designed with
18, 8, 17, and 14 types for topics, assocs, roles, occurrences, respectively
Knowledge models geographic containments of administrative units
Data preprocessing address fields preprocessed for entity recognition of locations
XML/spreadsheet data transformed to Topic Maps with mapping framework
all maps merged
Transformation
monthlyUpdates

8. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
8Anwendungsbeispiel
Topic Maps
package
topicWorks
with Topic Maps engine, configurable frontend, template system
URL http://www.bioregio-stern.de/navigator/en
individuals by default rendered in „topic view“
topic view collocates names, associations, and occurrences
types by default rendered in „table view“
table view lists instances and statements about them
customization for topics of particular interest (templates, tolog)
Visualization
patterns
Company info of biotech cluster as Topic Maps based web app

9. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
9Subject-centric information on cluster members Markt
topic:
company
topic:
year 1999
topic:
Stuttgart
topic:
diagnostics
relational view automatically rendered from underlying topic maps
collocates all instances of type „company“ – and its subtypes –
and all statements about these instances
What is known
about BioTeSys?

10. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
10Markt
precious information on
the company –
lots of reading, though
View of a particular cluster member – 1

11. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
11MarktView of a particular cluster member – 2
associations anchor the company
in time, space, and fields of activity
of the biotech cluster
topic:
BioProfile
what is known about this
subject ?

12. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
12Markt
there are 15 participating
cluster members
What is known about BioProfile?
which members are – like
BioTeSys – active in
diagnostics?
it is an R&D funding program

13. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
13MarktOverview on a particular field of activity
What member info
is available?

14. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
14MarktOverview on a particular city
hierarchy browser
9 cluster members
headquartered in
Esslingen

15. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
15MarktGeographic knowledge model – drill up
drill-up to county level

16. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
16MarktOverview of a particular county
What are the cluster
members‘ fields of
activity?

17. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
mildew susceptibility
17MarktOverview of the fields of activity in the cluster
relational view rendered automatically

18. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
18Markt
text filter reduces to
fields of activity of a
particular company,
and identifies other
relevant members
Overview of the fields of activity in the cluster + text filter

19. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
19Markt
search for a
particular county
Semantic search – displaying typed results, using inference
43 relevant topics found,
and grouped by type
search evaluates
inference rule on
geographic
containment
for retrieving all
relevant topics

20. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
20MarktSemantic search – reducing results to type of interest
reduce results to the type of interest,
here: medtech companies
10 medtech cluster members
located in the sought-after county

21. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
CMS TM app
number of pages 240 500
internal links 240 6000
overviews 1 230
21
documents in CMS topic map
companies in medical technology?
medtech companies in Reutlingen?
biotech companies in Landkreis Tübingen active in diagnostics?
retrieval efforts for finding answers
manually
browsing
over 200
web pages
1 click
1 click + 1 filter
1 search + 1 click
21Anwendungsbeispiel
geographic
knowledge models,
multiple fields of
activity in spreadsheet
Document-centered CMS versus Topic Maps-based web app

22. Weber, Eilbracht, Kesberg @ TMRA 2010
Topic Maps-based web app* on top of
a document-centric CMS
with member information of a biotech cluster.
22ZusammenfassungSummary and conclusion
Use case
Conclusion Topic Maps-based web frontends
on top of document-centric CMS
improve content usability
by subject-centric information delivery.
* www.bioregio-stern.de/navigator/en