Ctm 1.0 Tutorial

CTM 1.0
Compact Topic Maps Syntax
Tutorial

Lars Heuer <heuer@semagia.com>

TMRA 2008, Leipzig · 15.10.2008

Table of Contents
Introduction
Overview
Details
Create your own topic map
Questions / Answers

© 2008 Lars Heuer · http://www.semagia.com TMRA 2008, Leipzig · 15.10.2008 2

Introduction
CTM is a textual Topic Maps syntax (like LTM
and AsTMa=)
Is meant to be human-friendly
Supports TMDM
Standard format (ISO 13250-6) unlike LTM
and AsTMa=
Human-readable, usable for examples,
papers

Introduction
CTM is utilised by TMCL to define constraints
CTM will be used by TMQL for
INSERT operations
UPDATE operations
DELETE operations
Shares some similarities with TMQL (syntax
wise)
Current draft (slightly outdated)
http://www.isotopicmaps.org/ctm/

Introduction
CTM is nearly finished (feature-wise, syntax-
wise)
Next draft will appear within the next two
months
Currently no stable, upto-date CTM parser is
available (should change soon)


Overview – ToC
Topcis
Names
Occurrences
Literals
Associations
Comments
Summary


Overview – Topics
Topics are introduced with an identity and
end with a dot (quot;.quot;) (often labeled as quot;topic
blockquot;)
Typically topics start with a simple identifier,
a subject identifier, or subject locator.
john-lennon . # Topic with an item identifier

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lennon . # subj. ident.

= http://www.google.com/ . # subject locator


Overview – Topics
An IRI is interpreted as subject identifier
unless it is prefixed by an equal sign
(or it is used as occurrence / variant value)
Rootless IRIs (IRIs without quot;://quot;) are not
detected, they have to be embedded into quot;<quot;
quot;>quot;:
Topic with a subject identifier:
<mailto:heuer@semagia.com> .


Overview – Topics
Topic statements like names and
occurrences are delimited by a semicolon
(quot;;quot;)
The semicolon is optional iff it is the last
statement (if the next character is the dot
which marks the end of the topic)


Overview – Names
Names are introduced by a hyphen, followed
by an optional name type and the value
Example:
john-lennon
- quot;John Lennonquot;;
- surname: quot;Lennonquot;.


Overview – Names
Names are introduced by a hyphen, followed
by an optional name type and the value
Example:
Name value
john-lennon
- quot;John Lennonquot;;
- surname: quot;Lennonquot;.

Name type


Overview – Names
If the name type is not specified, the name
uses automatically the default topic name
type
The name scope is introduced by an @ sign
followed by comma delimited themes
Example:
The-Beatles - quot;The Beatlesquot;;
- quot;Fab Fourquot; @nickname;
- quot;Pilzköpfequot; @nickname, de .

Overview – Occurrences
Occurrences start with the type, a colon
followed by the value
Example:
The-Beatles
website: http://www.beatles.com.uk
.


Overview – Occurrence Scope
The scope is introduced by an @ sign followed
by the themes
Example:
The-Beatles
website: http://www.beatles.com.uk ;
website: http://beatles.de/ @de .


Overview – Literals
CTM provides some built-in datatypes:
String
Date
DateTime
Integer
Decimal
IRI
These datatypes can be used as occurrence
and variant value

Overview – Literals – String
Example:
TopicMaps
- quot;Topic Mapsquot;;
description: quot;A technology …quot;.
The datatype of the occurrence quot;descriptionquot; is
set to xsd:string


Overview – Literals – Dates
Examples:
McCartney
birthday: 1942-02-18.

Blog-Entry
created: 2008-10-12T17:30:22 .
Datatype of quot;birthdayquot; is set to xsd:date,
dataype of quot;createdquot; is xsd:dateTime


Overview – Literals – Numbers
Examples:
McCartney
age: 66 .

CTM
version: 1.0 .
Datatype of quot;agequot; is set to xsd:integer, dataype
of quot;versionquot; is xsd:decimal


Overview – Literals
Non-built-in datatypes can be expressed using
the string value with an explicit datatype:
quot;valuequot;^^datatype
The quot;datatypequot; is specified by an IRI or a
QName
Examples:
quot;09-19quot;^^xsd:gMonthDay
quot;truequot;^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#
boolean

Overview – Associations

member-of(group: TheBeatles,

member: john-lennon)


Association type


Role types


Association type

Role players


Role types


The (optional) scope is added to an
association by the @ sign followed by the
themes
Example:
member-of(group: blind-faith,
member: eric) @year-1969


Overview – Comments
Single line comments start with a hash (quot;#quot;)
and reach until the end of a line
Multiline comments start with #( and end with
)#
Examples:
# I am a single line comment

#( line 1
line 2 )#

Overview – Summary
Topics are introduced by an identity and end
with a dot (quot;.quot;). The quot;topic blockquot;
Topic statements must be delimited by a
semicolon (quot;;quot;) unless it is the last statement
Names are introduced with a hyphen (quot;-quot;), they
have an optional explicit type and a value
(string)
Occurrences are introduced by the type
followed by a literal

Overview – Summary
CTM has built-in literals but the user can
specify any datatype using the
quot;valuequot;^^datatype notation
Notation for associations:
assoc-type(role-type1: role-player1,
role-type2: role-player2, …)
The scope of a statement is introduced by the
@ sign followed by comma-delimited themes


Details – ToC
Assigning additional identities to topics
Creating type-instance / supertype-subtype
relationships
Reification
Embedded Topics
Directives
Templates


Details - Topics
Topics are not limited to one identity, any
number of identities can be specified
Example:

McCartney
http://en.wikipedia.org/Paul_McCartney ;
http://de.wikipedia.org/Paul_McCartney .

Topic with the item identifier quot;McCartneyquot;
and two subject identifiers

Details - Topics
Example:

GoogleWebsite
= http://www.google.com/ .

Topic with the item identifier
quot;GoogleWebsitequot; and a subject locator


Details – Type-Instance
CTM provides the keyword quot;isaquot; to establish
type-instance relationships between topics
Example:
john isa person .

Creates a type-instance association
between quot;johnquot; and quot;personquot; where quot;johnquot;
plays the quot;instancequot; role and quot;personquot; plays
the quot;typequot; role

Details – Supertype-Subtype
The keyword quot;akoquot; creates a supertype-
subtype association between topics
Example:
album ako work .

Creates a supertype-subtype association
between quot;albumquot; and quot;workquot; where quot;albumquot;
plays the quot;subtypequot; role and quot;workquot; plays the
quot;supertypequot; role

Details – Reification
To reify a statment, use a tilde (quot;~quot;) followed
by a topic reference
Example:
works-for(company: BigCo,
employee: Barney) ~ barneys-employment

barneys-employment
descr: quot;Barneys employment during 1980quot;.


Details – Embedded Topics
Everywhere where a topic reference is
excpected (i.e. as type) an embedded topic
can be used
Embedded topics get an automatically
generated item identifier
It's possible to define additional (stable
identities)
Handy for reification or where an explicit
reference to a topic is not needed

Details – Embedded Topics
Example:

works-for(company: BigCo,
employee: Barney) ~ [descr: quot;Barneys…quot;]


Details – Directives – Prefix
The quot;%prefixquot; directive can be used to assign
an IRI to an identifier
The identifier can be is used as prefix within a
QName
Example:

%prefix wp http://en.wikipedia.org/ ;
wp:John_Lennon – quot;John Lennonquot;.


QNames can also be used for subject locators:

%prefix wp http://en.wikipedia.org/ ;

= wp:John_Lennon
decription: quot;Wikipedia page about
John Lennonquot;.


QNames can be used everywhere where a
reference to a topic should be made (i.e. as
association type, occurrence type, name type
etc.)


Details – Directives –
Mergemap
The %mergemap directive has the same
semantics as the mergemap element in XTM
2.0 (merge the current topic map with the
referenced one).
In CTM it will be possible to specify the syntax
of the referenced file. I.e. it will be possible to
merge-in a topic map which is encoded in XTM
2.0, or in LTM etc.
This directive will change, current spec is
outdated

Details – Directives – Include
%include:
The include directive imports the referenced
CTM file into the current one. Including a file
makes the templates of the other file available
in the current one and topics with an equal
local identifier (like quot;johnquot;) are merged (this
would not be the case if the %mergemap
directive is used)
Prefixes are not imported!

Details – Directives – Include
Example:
File A:
john – quot;John Lennonquot;.

File B:
john – surname: quot;Lennonquot;.
If file A includes file B the result would be:
john – quot;John Lennonquot;; - surname: quot;Lennonquot;.


Details – Templates
Templates are used to shorten the CTM code
Especially useful for facts which occur often in
a specific domain
Example:
def plays-for($player, $group, $instrument)
plays(player: $player, group: $group,
instrument: $instrument)
end
McCartney plays-for(The-Beatles, piano).

If templates are invoked within a topic block,
the first argument of the template is the topic!
Again:
McCartney plays-for(The-Beatles, piano).
is translated to:
plays-for(McCartney, The-Beatles, piano)
If a templates are invoked outside a topic block,
all parameters have to be specified:
plays-for(McCartney, The-Beatles, piano)

Since the topic is always used as first
argument, it is not possible to invoke a
template with no arguments within a topic
block
Within a template literals and topic references can
be replaced with variables


def born($person, $date, $place)
$person isa person;
birthday: $date .
born-in(person : $person, birthplace : $place).
end

mccartney born(1942-06-12, Liverpool).


Result:

mccartney isa person;
birthday: 1942-06-12 .

born-in(person: mccartney, birthplace: Liverpool)


Don't try to reify something within a template unless
the reifier is variable otherwise the CTM processor
reports violations of Topic Maps constraints
Example (don't do that):
def works-for($person, $company)
works-for(company: $company,
person: $person) ~ employment
end
Everytime the quot;works-forquot; template is invoked, the
processor tries to reify the newly created association
which leads to an error because a topic can reify only
one statement

This works:
def works-for($person, $company, $reifier)
works-for(company: $company,
person: $person) ~ $reifier
end


def is-beatle($beatle) # quot;Decorates 'is-member-of'
is-member-of($beatle, The-Beatles)
end
def is-member-of($member, $group)
member-of(member: $member, group: $group)
end
is-member-of(sting, The-Police)
is-beatle(john)


Details – Wildcards
?foo creates an automatically generated item
identifier. Everytime the parser sees ?foo
again, the same topic will be reused
? creates a topic with an automatically
generated item identifier, it is not possible to
create a reference to the topic (c.f embedded
topics)


Details – Wildcards
Wildcards in templates create a new item
identifier for every invokation

def tpl()
?foo – quot;Fooquot;.
assoc(role-type: ?foo)
end
tpl();
tpl(); # two topics created from ?foo

Create your own topic map
Think of a music collection, where each album is specified by a
PSI which starts with quot;http://psi.example.org/album/quot; (i.e.
http://psi.example.org/album/WhiteAlbum )
Create at least two album topics incl. a name and an occurrence
(i.e. a description)
Both albums are instances of http://psi.music.com/albumquot;
Create a quot;createdquot; association between a musician or group and
the first album (the musician plays the quot;creatorquot; role, the album the
quot;workquot; role)
Create a template quot;created-byquot; for the quot;createdquot; association
The second album should use the quot;created-byquot; template to
establish an association between the album and the musician
Use QNames where reasonable


Possible solution
%prefix album http://psi.example.org/album/ ;

album:WhiteAlbum – quot;White Albumquot;;
descr: quot;The White Album was one of the last
album releases of The Beatlesquot;.

The-Beatles – quot;The Beatlesquot;.

created(creator: The-Beatles,
work: album:WhiteAlbum)

Possible solution
def created-by($work, $creator)
created(creator: $creator,
work: $work)
end

album:SgtPepper – quot;Sgt. Pepperquot;;
created-by(The-Beatles);
descr: quot;One of the first concept albumsquot;.


Discussion

Questions?

Answers! ☺


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