Data availability is no longer a major problem given the sheer volume of information on the web and the advances in information retrieval and indexing technology. The lack of interoperability at the model, metadata, and data levels presents the major barrier to knowledge and data sharing. Many-to-many data-interchange media, such as the web, pose new requirements for sharing and exchange of data. One of the most challenging among them is the ability to make use of information outside of its structural origin. This requirement implies data interchange not only on a syntactic, but also on a semantic and structural level.

The presented work was motivated by the idea of creating a tool that allows effective reuse and integration of existing Topic Maps™ and RDF data. Similarly to previous efforts in this direction we aim at enhancing the interoperability between the two models by providing translation bridging the two frameworks, instead of forcing applications “to speak the same language”.

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