The Ontopia Knowledge Suite

The Ontopia Knowledge Suite (OKS) is a complete set of tools for building, maintaining, and deploying topic map-based applications. As of version 3.0, it consists of the Ontopia Topic Map Engine, the Ontopia Navigator Framework, the Web Editor Framework, the Full-text Search Integration, RDBMS Backend Connector, and the Topic Map Query Engine and Schema Tools. Further components are also planned (please see the diagram down below).

For prices, see our pricelist and ordering information.
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Ontopia Topic Map Engine

The Engine is the core of the OKS. It is a generic software development kit (SDK) that implements the Topic Maps standard and allows developers to access and manipulate the kinds of constructs found in topic maps (e.g. topics, associations, occurrences) and apply other concepts defined by the standard (e.g. scope and merging).

The Engine contains a number of additional components, including the full-text search integration, the RDBMS backend, the query engine, and the schema tools.

Ontopia Navigator Framework

The Navigator Framework is a JSP-based framework for building J2EE-compliant web applications, including topic map-driven web portals. A reference implementation of this product is available as a free, stand-alone, generic topic map browser, Omnigator.

Ontopia Web Editor Framework

The Web Editor Framework simplifies the development of collaborative topic map editing web applications. It extends the Navigator Framework with support for actions that modify the content of the topic map, making it easy to connect user interface elements to topic map modification actions. A reference implementation of this product is also available as a free, stand-alone, generic topic map editor, Ontopoly.

CMS Integrations

One of the main uses of Topic Maps is to organize content, and we have integrated the OKS into some web content management systems to enable this:

• Escenic Topic Maps module. We have integrated the OKS with Escenic a leading international web CMS heavily used in the media industry.
• OfficeNet Knowledge Portal is an integration of the OKS with a web CMS for small- to medium-sized web sites used by a number of private-sector customers in Norway.

OKS Samplers

OKS Samplers are free generic applications built on top of the Ontopia Navigator and Web Editor Frameworks:

• Omnigator allows users to load and browse any conforming topic map, including their own. Designed primarily as a teaching aid to help newcomers understand the topic map concepts, it is also an extremely useful tool for debugging topic maps and for building demo applications.
• Vizigator provides graphical navigation of a topic map, offering a visual alternative to text-only browsing.
• Ontopoly, the newest addition to the OKS, is an ontology-driven, generic topic map editor. Users can easily define the ontology to which their topic map should conform, then populate the instances of topics, associations, and occurrences.

You can download OKS Samplers to create and browse your own topic maps, or test them out online.

OKS Samplers are just the tip of the iceberg. Using the full OKS, you can build custom applications to meet your specific requirements and integrate topic map capability with other processes for a seamless knowledge management solution.

Overview of the OKS