The TAO of Topic Maps
Topics, Associations, Occurences
Indexes define these, Glossaries define topic meaning, Thesauri define topic associations and may 'type' them eg broader term, related term. Topic maps are more efficient than full text indexing.
Conceptual graphs in AI
Topic maps combine the topic/occurence axis with the topic/association axis
Topics have types eg Puccini would be a topic of type “composer”. Types must also be topics.
Occurances are generally external to the topic map document itself.
A topic association asserts a relationship between two or more topics eg “Tosca was written by Puccini”, Tosca takes place in Rome”
The ability to do typing of topic associations greatly increases the expressive power of the topic map, making it possible to group together the set of topics that have the same relationship to any given topic.
IFS
Indicators - a resource that is intended to provide a positive, unambiguous indication of the identity of a subject.
Facets - name, value metadata pairs for topics
Scope - contextual boundary for a topic as distinct from its homonyms