Have you ever created a Topic Maps application and it took just too much time? Have you ever created a Rails web portal and wondered, if you could enrich it with Topic Maps? If you answer at least one of these questions with YES, this workshop is the right one for you.

Ruby Topic Maps was extended to use Ontopia internally. To achieve this it uses JRuby – a complete Ruby which runs inside a Java Virtual Machine. It benefits from the wealth of Java libraries and adds the agility of Ruby.

We’ll start with a new Rails application, add some forms, enter some data (feel free to bring your topic maps with you!) and run TMQL queries on it within minutes. Prior TMQL knowledge is not required, it will all be covered with examples and an example map. Some programming experience and basic knowledge of Topic Maps concepts are recommended.

At the end of the workshop every attendee will have a small web portal based on Topic Maps running on his/her personal laptop which could then be deployed to an application server.