Taxonomy Tools Requirements and Capabilities

Joseph A Busch, Project Performance Corporation

Zachary R Wahl, Project Performance Corporation

Tools

• Taxonomy editing – Data Harmony, Mondeca, MultiTes, PoolParty, protégé, SmartLogic,

Synaptica, Top Braid Composer, Wordmap

• Metadata tagging (automated categorization) – CIS, ConceptSearching, Data Harmony, MetaTagger, nStein, Smartlogic,

temis

• Content management – Documentum, Drupal, Fat Wire Interwoven, Joomla!, OpenText,

SharePoint

Typology of taxonomy tool functions

Functional area Functions

Taxonomy Development Create a taxonomy User roles and permissions

Taxonomy Maintenance Add, edit, move, delete items Assign or modify privileges to one or a group of items Activity logging

Taxonomy Governance Approval workflow for additions and changes

Metadata Controlled Vocabulary

Assign attributes to a category Associate controlled vocabulary with metadata field Thesaurus capabilities

User Interface Search and browse Drag and drop Multiple windows

Reporting Alphabetical, hierarchical and other views Visualizations Importing and exporting taxonomies

Application Integration APIs (WSDL, Scripts, Java, etc.) Application integration (CMS, DMS, search engine, etc.)

3

Normal taxonomy editor functionality requirements

Hierarchy Browser

Term Editing

Standard and custom fields & attributes Standard and custom relations Data typing and restrictions Consistency enforcement Flexible reporting (exporting) Flexible importing

Bas

ic

Ad

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UNICODE Multiple vocabulary support Inter-vocabulary relations Unique IDs/URIs: externally supplied IDs

are not sufficient

Workflow Voting Change Request Mgmt. Stylistic rules enforcement Programmability

Additional functionality for taxonomy editing software

Aliases – Need to deal with synonyms, but also with alternative labels based on language or other factors.

Notes – Useful to have several types of notes fields to keep public notes separate from team’s working notes.

Effective dates – Enable the determination of what was the ‘valid’ taxonomy on dates in the past. Part of a set of strong requirements on provenance.

URIs – Must be able to support the semantic web.

Poly-hierarchy – Must be able to support multiple parents (as well as the same string with different meanings).

Inter-category relations – Must be able to provide links that don’t follow hierarchy, and even go between vocabularies.

Rules checking – Check conformance to style rules like length, use of ampersand, etc.

Workflow – Tracking the handling of change requests, as well as the process of getting approvals for edits.

Scenarios to evaluate taxonomy tools

Functional area Functions

Database Definition How is the database created? Where is it stored? Is it Z39.10 and ISO 2788 compliant? Database license requirement?

Importing/Exporting Data How are data imported? What file formats are supported? Can data files be in batches?

Add, Edit, Delete Categories How easily are categories added, edited, or deleted? Can categories be added, edited, or deleted in batches?

Relationship Types How are relationship types defined? What types are supported? How is polyhierarchy handled?

Add, Edit, Delete Relationships

How easily are relationships added, edited, or deleted? Can relationships be added, edited, or deleted in batches? Does a change propagate to all instances?

Reporting How does the TMS report: new, edited, deleted taxonomies and categories; new, edited, deleted relationship types and relationships; mapped taxonomies and categories? How are the reports presented? What audit logs are available? Can changes be traced to users who suggested them? Is an “approval” step for changes available for administrators?

User Access Can the TMS integrate user accounts with existing authentication systems, e.g. Active Directory, etc.? Is there support for role-based access or defined group membership with configurable access? Is there a workflow to approve changes? What functionality is available or restricted based on a user’s security privileges?

6

MultiTes search, browse and edit term UI

Search

Browse Alpha List

Edit Term

MultiTes add relationships UI

8

Add Relationships

Edit Term

MultiTes strength is report writer

Alphabetical Report Hierarchy (Top term) Report

MultiTes ratings

Functional area MultiTes

Database Definition 5

Importing Data 3

Add, Edit, Delete Categories 2

Relationship Types 4

Add, Edit, Delete Relationships 2

Reporting 1

Exporting Data 3

User Access 0

Total Score 20

Average Score 2.5

10

Strengths • Widely used. • Inexpensive. • Flexible report writer for

exporting data.

Synaptica term record

11

Term

Description/Scope Note

Parent

Children

Variations

Synaptica tree view

12

Term

Tree

Description/Scope Note

Synaptica visualizations

13

Word Map Radial Map

Synaptica ratings

Functional area Synaptica

Database Definition 5

Importing Data 4

Add, Edit, Delete Categories 5

Relationship Types 4

Add, Edit, Delete Relationships 5

Reporting 5

Exporting Data 5

User Access 5

Total Score 38

Average Score 4.75

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Strengths • Proven performance with

very large data sets.

TopBraid term record

15

Term

Relationships

Hierarchy

TopBraid edit term record

16

TopBraid visualization

17

Graph View

TopBraid ratings

Functional area TopBraid

Database Definition 5

Importing Data 5

Add, Edit, Delete Categories 5

Relationship Types 5

Add, Edit, Delete Relationships 5

Reporting 5

Exporting Data 5

User Access 5

Total Score 40

Average Score 5

18

Strengths • XML RDF under the hood

SmartLogic term record

19

Term

Relationships

Hierarchy

SmartLogic term edit options

20

Add non-preferred terms

Add hier. relationships

SmartLogic visualization

21

Graph View

SmartLogic ratings

Functional area SmartLogic

Database Definition 5

Importing Data 4

Add, Edit, Delete Categories 5

Relationship Types 4

Add, Edit, Delete Relationships 5

Reporting 5

Exporting Data 5

User Access 4

Total Score 37

Average Score 4.63

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Strengths • Integrations with CMS

(SharePoint, Documentum) and search engines (FAST, Google)

Summary of taxonomy tool ratings

Functional area MultiTes SmartLogic Synaptica TopBraid

Database Definition 5 5 5 5

Importing Data 3 4 4 5

Add, Edit, Delete Categories 2 5 5 5

Relationship Types 4 4 4 5

Add, Edit, Delete Relationships 2 5 5 5

Reporting 1 5 5 5

Exporting Data 3 5 5 5

User Access 0 4 5 5

Total Score 20 37 38 40

Average Score 2.5 4.63 4.75 5

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Taxonomy editing tools vendors

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Completeness of Vision Visionaries Niche Players

Most popular taxonomy editor is MS Excel

An immature area– No vendors are in upper-right quadrant!

MultiTes is widely used, cheap with functionality

High functionality /high cost products ($50-100K)

Taxonomy Tools

Vendor Taxonomy Editing Tools URL

Apelon Distributed

Terminology System (DTS

www.apelon.com/Products/DTS/tabid/97/Default.aspx

Cuadra STAR/Thesaurus www.cuadra.com/products/vocabulary.html

Thesaurus Master www.dataharmony.com/products/thesaurus_master.html

MS Excel www.microsoft.com

Intelligent Topic Manager www.mondeca.com/Products/ITM

MultiTes Pro www.multites.com

PoolParty Thesaurus Manager poolparty.punkt.at/poolparty-thesaurus-manager-3-0-release-

notes/

protege protege.stanford.edu

Semaphore Ontology

Manager

www.smartlogic.com/home/products/semaphore-

modules/ontology-manager/ontology-manager-overview

Synaptica www.synapticasoftware.com

SAS Ontology Management www.sas.com/text-analytics/ontology-management/index.html

Temis Luxid www.temis.com/?id=201&selt=1

Term Tree www.termtree.com.au

Top Braid Composer www.topquadrant.com/products/TB_Composer.html

WordMap Designer www.wordmap.com 25

QUESTIONS Thank You

For More Information:

Zach Wahl

Email: zwahl@ppc.com

Twitter: twitter.com/#!/ppc_corp, twitter.com/#!/ZacharyWahl

Joseph Busch

Email: jbusch@ppc.com

Twitter: twitter.com/joebusch

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Blog: blog.ppc.com Web: www.ppc.com/Pages/KMWorld2011.aspx