Re: [Tm4j-developers] TopicMapProvider

[Gerd M. <ge...@sm...>]

Hi Kal,

> What you describe sounds like a generic "import" method for the
> TopicMapProvider interface - essentially a way for an application programmer
> to easily code the task of parsing an XTM file and storing it in whatever
> underlying topic map store is being used by the system. Is that correct ?

Yeap, that's what I was thinking of. The problem was that I've implemented
the TopicMapProvider stuff, but I didn't know what to provide since that
database was empty. Thus I've needed a addTopicMap method somehow. And as
I saw, you've already added such method to the in-memory implementation.

> If so, I'm not sure that TopicMapProvider is necessarily the right place to
> add this functionality - generic import and export interfaces would
> definitely be useful and the TopicMapManager interface makes it relatively
> easy to implement, but I think I would prefer to have a separate interface
> for store-independant and syntax-independant import/export - I am thinking
> that in the future it would be good to reintroduce support for reading and
> possibly writing ISO 13250 syntax and for reading and possibly writing
> Ontopia's LTM syntax. For that reason I would prefer to encapsulate import
> and export in some interface(s) separate from TopicMapProvider. What do you
> think ?

Sounds really good. But IMHO the Import/Export interfaces must be connected
somehow with a provider, because finally the provider knows how to store
the topicmap. E.g. a provider could have a method like 
ImportFilter getImportFilter( String format ) or something like that.
 
The next thing I was thinking about is the base URL of a topic map.
Should a provider have a base URL and all topicmaps which it provides
are 'folders' of this URL ? E.g. the ozone provider has 
http://topicmap.techquila.com/ozone, thus a topicmap provided by this
has http://topicmap.techquila.com/ozone/the_name_of_the_tm 

And what about the name of topicmap ? Is it user-defined or
auto generated ?

I've noticed that you checked in a developer doc made with
docbook. Which tool do you use for that ?

Best Regards,
Gerd

--
________________________________________________________________
Gerd Mueller                                    ge...@sm...     
SMB GmbH                                  http://www.smb-tec.com