Its History and FutureThe method of the topic maps dates back to at least 1991, though their use has come a long way since then. The earliest use of such a form of information interchange was detailed in a publication entitled XML Topic Maps – Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web: http://www.aw-bc.com/samplechapter/0201749602.pdf in the third chapter. In more recent years, the topic map has been standardized as a data model by ISO in 2006, and was also given XML-based serialization format, XTM 2. Currently a query language and a modelling language are in the progress of ISO standardization.
What makes up a Topic Map?
For example, while plain language that details a hypothetical repair procedure in this way: “Fixing part A consists of steps X and Y”, a topic map takes a step back from the information itself and rather details the parts of the information and how they are connected. A topic map description of that same procedure would read something like: “Part A is of Type Q which is mentioned in sections Y and Z”. In a sense, the topic map helps the user to see the forest rather than the trees in the information architecture.
The information a topic maps represents is made up of 3 parts, sometimes referred to as the “TAO” of topic maps. Topics, which may refer to any person, place, organization or individual file; associations, which represent relationships between topics; and occurrences, which represent sources of information that are relevant to a particular topic.