New Working Draft for the Topic Maps Reference Model

Steve Newcomb has announced the release of a new working draft for the TMRM. "Significantly shorter", this new version has let aside convoluted details of previous versions about structure of assertions, to focus on management of subject identity, inside and across Topic Map Applications, which should "disclose" in particular:

• the rules for determining when multiple proxies are surrogates for the same subject
• the rules for merging the values of the properties of proxies, when it has been determined that the proxies are surrogates for the same subject and they need to be viewable as a single proxy.

I notice the use of the word "rules" here, although later on in the document more stress is put on "Subject Identity Properties". My guess is that ongoing debate on identification process could lead TMRM in a near future to shift from those "SIP" to "SIR" : "Subject Identification Rules".

[Update 2013-02-05] : Even if I'm not been talking much of topic maps in this blog for quite a while, this post is the second top viewed since 2008. The final Topic Maps Reference Model published in 2007 is available at Topic Maps Lab.