write-once, re-use elsewhere theasurus tools

Just to pick up and emphasise this comment from Dan ...

> What we can do, though, is take these 
> as use cases for evaluating the _machine_ interface defined 
> in the SKOS
> API. We can ask ourselves whether such a UI could be built against
> any/all SKOS servers that meet the API. This opens up the prospect of 
> write-once, re-use elsewhere thesaurus browsing tools...
> 

Having re-usable thesaurus browsing components, esp. for web pages, is for
me a major driver of the SKOS work - I'd really like to be able to support
the d-lib & thesaurus communities, where folks are currently putting a lot
of energy into implementing bespoke UIs that talk to their uniquely
structured database and hence aren't re-usable by anyone else.

Whether the current SKOS API supports the full range of functionality
required by thesaurus browsing and searching components is the acid test for
the API, and this requirement is a major driver for it's continued
development.  So comments and descriptions of what a thesaurus browser ought
to be able to do are very valuable here.

Just a final word, it really is astonishing to me the extent to which some
large organisations seem to be implementing large and monolithic information
systems end-to-end, with little or no thought as to how they can unplug and
reuse some of these components in the future as systems and requirements
evolve, or make them available outside their own organisation as part of a
shared infrastructure or distributed service.  I reckon there's a big
opportunity for some very simple and yet very valuable work to be done in
this area.    

Al.

Received on Tuesday, 4 May 2004 09:16:48 UTC