THIS THESIS IS IN GERMAN!

Since its inception, the Topic Maps Data Model (TMDM) is the foundation for the development of Topic Maps engines. A Topic Maps engine is a program library that enables to develop Topic Maps based applications using an application programming interface (API). In this thesis, the outdated Topic Maps API TMAPI 1.0 is adapted to the TMDM. It is restructured and extended with the goal of improved usability. This work formalizes the TMDM using a domain specific language. Based on this formalization, components of Topic Maps engines are generated using generators. The DSL, its implementation and the generators are introduced here.

Developed as part of this work, Ruby Topic Maps (RTM) is a Topic Maps engine for the Ruby programming language that implements the the improved Topic Maps API. Additionally, within the API of RTM, a concept for referencing Topics and specialized access and query methods are designed and implemented. It is shown that, thanks to these extensions, less and easier to understand source code is needed to develop the same functionality compared to TMAPI 1.0.

The freedom of the TMDM results in complexity that counteracts the productivity of development of domain applications. Developed as part of this work, the library Active Topic Maps enables the definition of domain classes using the Active Topic Maps Modelling Language (ActiveTMML). With ActiveTMML, combinable domain classes are specified that constitute a layer between the application above and the Topic Maps engine below. For this layer, the name Topic Maps middleware is introduced.