On'topia, 1999. [f. Gr. 'onto-' (being) + Gr. 'topos' (place); see -IA.] I. An imaginary world in which knowledge is well organised. II. A company that provides tools to help you discover your own Ontopia.
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Open Enrolment Classes in 2008

Open Enrolment Class in the US

The same class is also held in Chicago in the US by our US training partner Ligent on March 24-28, 2008. Please contact us or our training partner Ligent in the US for registration. Detailed Agenda

Events

Oslo, Norway, 2-4 April 2008: Topic Maps 2008
The international Topic Maps users' conference takes is arranged for the sixth time, and looks set to be the best yet. The program is not ready yet, but keep the dates free.

Kyoto, Japan, 12 Dec 2007: AToMS 2007
The Asian Topic Maps Summit takes place in Kyoto this year, and will contain a mix of research talks and case studies showing practical examples. Lars Marius Garshol from Bouvet will give the closing keynote at the conference.

Helsinki, Finland, 14 Nov 2007:
XML Finland Users' Group
The Finnish XML Users' Group is arranging an evening seminar on Topic Maps, where Antti Rauramo from Ontopia partner Index Information will present the OKS. The presentation appears to be followed by sauna.

Oslo, Norway, 30 Oct 2007:
Topic Maps Users' Group
Lars Marius Garshol will present on the use of automated classification with Topic Maps, together with classification specialists Robert Engels and Till Christopher Lech. The meeting is arranged by the Norwegian Computer Society, but attendance is free.

Bergen, Norway, 25 Oct 2007:
JavaBin Bergen
Lars Marius Garshol and Øyvind Litlere from Bouvet will present at a western Norway Java Users' Group meeting. They will give an introduction to Topic Maps, and talk about the City of Bergen project.

...Everywhere a Topic Map

The Ontopia Knowledge Suite is used is a wide range of applications from semantic portals to search/discovery to business process models. Read more about the many applications of Topic Maps.

Only Connect the Prose and the Passion...

Ontopia's brochure presents the business case for Topic Maps in clear and simple terms. "Live in fragments no longer" ... Download the brochure and share it with your colleagues!

Partners

Ontopia partners with leading consultants and systems integrators to serve the needs of its customers around the world. Meet Ontopia's Marketing and Technology Partners.

Recent Papers and Presentations

Ontopia has recently released a number of important new papers and presentations, including:

• The Case for Published Subjects (paper given at IRW 2006; the slides from that presentation)
• The Shape of Topic Maps to Come (Steve Pepper's closing keynote given at Emnekart 2006, 7 MB)
• Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? Topic Maps! — Making sense of it all
• Seamless Knowledge with TMRAP (2 MB .ppt presentation given at Extreme Markup 2004)
• The XML Papers: Lessons on Applying Topic Maps
• Living with Topic Maps and RDF
• Curing the Web's Identity Crisis: Subject Indicators for RDF
• Other papers...

Ontopia releases OKS 4.0

OSLO, 16 June 2008 — The new 4.0 release is a major new release and contains the following new features:

• Clustering support: The OKS can now be deployed in a cluster. Changes to the topic maps are automatically synchronized across the cluster guaranteeing data consistency across the entire cluster. This makes it easier to scale OKS applications.
• Support for XTM 2.0 import and export.
• Complete TMDM support: The Topic Maps engine and the tolog query language has been extended to provide full support for "ISO 13250-2: Topic Maps - Data Model". The changes include support for data types, null-value constraints and built-in support for reification.
• Support for large data content. Together with the support for data types on variants and occurrences this allows the developer to store data of any kind and any size inside the topic map. This includes support for images, audio and video.
• Ontopoly has been reimplemented on top of the Apache Wicket web framework. This means that it is component based, making it very extensible and easier to integrate into other web applications. The new version is much more interactive as it uses AJAX technology to update parts of the user-interface dynamically instead of rerendering the page on every change.
• Ontopoly has been extended to include an HTML editor component and support for uploading and display of images.
• DB2TM now supports arbitrary data types.
• The Java APIs have been through an overhaul in context of the support for TMDM and the removal of old deprecated features. The modifications needed are relatively small, but they should provide the developer with better runtime safety resulting in fewer bugs.
• OKS 4.0 now requires Java 1.4 or newer.

Ontopia's Topic Map Products & Services

Ontopia was started by leading members of the Topic Maps community in order to provide the tools and expertise required by those wanting to harness the power of the Topic Maps paradigm. In conjunction with partners around the world, we provide a full range of topic map-related solutions as well as training, and consulting services. A detailed description of the products including prices can be found on our product page.

Getting Started with Topic Maps

Topic mapping is a new paradigm for organizing, retrieving, and navigating information resources. Learn more about it from our online collection of free topic map resources or read Steve Pepper's popular introduction, the TAO of Topic Maps: Finding the Way in the Age of Infoglut. You can also download the PDF of our brochure Getting Started.

Ontopia acquired by Bouvet

OSLO, 16 March 2007 — Ontopia and Bouvet announce that Bouvet has acquired all shares in Ontopia. Bouvet is a Norwegian consulting house of more than 300 consultants, which has had a strong focus on Topic Maps for a number of years. Today Bouvet has around 40 consultants building Topic Maps-based solutions. According to the sales agreement, Bouvet acquires all of Ontopia's employees, partners, and customers, as well as the Ontopia Knowledge Suite (OKS). The move further strengthens Bouvet's Topic Maps focus.

Bouvet has over the past few years built Norway's leading consulting team on Topic Maps, and has developed more than 40 solutions for customers like Norway Post, the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, and the Norwegian Consumers' Council. Last month saw the launch of both the citizen's portal for the city of Bergen, Norway's second largest city, and TheGovernment.no. Both launches have received wide media coverage.

Ontopia and Bouvet have had a close partnership over many years, and together delivered solutions like Kulturnett.no (Norwegian cultural portal) and the city of Bergen portal. The acquisition makes Ontopia part of a much larger entity, with the resources to take the Ontopia vision forward.

"Getting Ontopia's deep Topic Maps competence on board at Bouvet is very exciting for us. It strengthens our ambition to deliver a broad range of Topic Maps-based solutions. Given today's focus on semantic standards the timing is perfect," says Ole-Jørgen Tallaksrud, head of business development at Bouvet.

"We were looking for alternative ways to grow, and found Bouvet to be the most attractive option. Bouvet's broad competence complements our own narrower focus very well," says Ontopia's CTO Lars Marius Garshol. "We believe we can achieve much more as part of Bouvet than we were able to on our own."

"Ontopia has played a decisive role in establishing Topic Maps as an important technology, both in Norway and internationally," comments Steve Pepper. Steve has been chair of Ontopia's board until the acquisition. "I'm delighted that Bouvet, with their competence and professionalism, now take over this inheritance and carry it forward."

For more information, please contact:

• Ole-Jørgen Tallaksrud, Bouvet, head of business development.
  Email: ole.tallaksrud@bouvet.no
  Phone: +47 91 36 18 89
• Lars Marius Garshol, CTO of Ontopia until the acquisition.
  Email: larsga@ontopia.net
  Phone: +47 98 21 55 50
• Sverre Hurum, Bouvet, CEO, Bouvet.
  Email: sverre.hurum@bouvet.no
  Phone: +47 23 40 60 00