I attended the Open Forum for Metadata Registries conference
(http://metadata-stds.org/OpenForum2003/) that was held last week. The
conference was well attended (> 200) and included participants from a
variety of organizations (business, standards, government, research,
academic, etc.). A number of different classes of registries were
presented, including:
ISO 11179 Metadata registries
OASIS ebXML registries
UDDI registries
The Dublin Core Registry
The first two days focused on standards/technologies and tutorials. The
keynote, presented by Bruce Bargmeyer (Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory), gave a good overview of the different registry types, their use
and level of interoperability. This was followed by presentations and
tutorials on the ISO 11179 standard, UDDI and ebXML. I gave a presentation,
and tutorial, on the Dublin Core Metadata registry, which seemed
well-received.
The remainder of the conference was divided into the following tracks:
Defense Track
eBusiness, eCommerce and eGovernment Track
Environment: Econformatics (2 tracks)
Healthcare and Bioinformatics Track
Learning Technologies and Knowledge Management Track
Statistics Track
Terminology and Ontologies Track
Transportation, Aviation, and Aerospace Track
I attended the Terminology and Ontologies Track. Two topic-map-related
presentations were particularly interesting:
- "Natural Language Processing for Metadata Definitions and
Descriptions", presented by Edward Hovy (USC) gave an overview of his
experiences with various topic map issues, including pattern recognition,
"factoid" creation, etc.
- "Semantic Network Services", presented by Thomas Bandholtz
(SchlumbergerSema), presented his experience with the GEIN application
(http://www.gein.de). This application provides a web based interface
(portal) and an application interface (using Web services) for topic maps.
I thought the conference was very worthwhile and am pleased we were invited
to participate. It was interesting to hear registries discussed from the
perspective of businesses and various government agencies.
Interoperability, at a data interchange level, appeared to be a much larger
concern than did semantic understanding.
The presentations will be posted on the conference Web site
(http://metadata-stds.org/OpenForum2003/) in the near future. In the
interim, please let me know if I can answer any questions regarding the
sessions I attended.
Best Regards,
Harry Wagner
OCLC / DCMI
Dublin, OH 43017
(614) 761-5178
mailto:[log in to unmask]
