A Distributed Topic Map Architecture for Enterprise Knowledge Management

Topic maps offer a powerful foundation for knowledge representation and the implementation of knowledge management applications. Using ontologies to model knowledge structures, they offer concepts to link these knowledge structures with unstructured data stored in files, external documents etc. This paper presents the architecture and prototypical implementation of a topic map application infrastructure (called "topic grid" in the following) allowing transparent access to different topic maps distributed in a network. To a client of the topic grid, it appears as if access to a single virtual topic map is provided. The topic grid architecture is designed as a multi-protocol layered model in order to enhance its reusability