Novel Topic Maps to RDF/RDF Schema Translation Method

We propose an enhanced method for translating Topic Maps to RDF/RDF Schema, to realize the Semantic Web. A critical issue for the Semantic Web is to efficiently and precisely describe Web information resources, i.e., Web metadata. Two representative standards, Topic Maps and RDF have been used for Web metadata. RDF-based standardization and implementation of the Semantic Web have been actively performed. Since the Semantic Web must accept and understand all Web information resources that are represented with the other methods, Topic Maps-to-RDF translation has become an issue. Even though many Topic Maps to RDF translation methods have been devised, they still have several problems (e.g. semantic loss, complex expression, etc.). Our translation method provides an improved solution to these problems. This method shows lower semantic loss than the previous methods due to extract both explicit semantics and implicit semantics. Compared to the previous methods, our method reduces the encoding complexity of resulting RDF. In addition, in terms of reversibility, the proposed method regenerates all Topic Maps constructs in an original source when is reverse translated.