DITA and SKOS: The Semantic Web

In a recent IBM DeveloperWorks article, Subject classification with DITA and SKOS, the IBM crew explore Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) and its relationship to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA).

DeveloperWorks summary: “Use a DITA specialization to manage the subject matter of your document content—that is, identify and process your content based on what each topic is about. With the approach, you can take advantage of the technologies of the Semantic Web for improved search, integration, and other processing. Instead of starting from scratch, however, you can build on standard topic-oriented strategies for authoring and processing content.”

According to IBM, “SKOS lets you define the subjects for a particular subject matter area (organizing these subjects as a taxonomy if desired) and then classify each piece of content to indicate its subject. For instance, using SKOS, you could define configuration and security as subjects, and classify the three example topics that relate to those subjects so that users could browse the subjects to find the content regardless of whether the words ‘configuration’ or ‘security’ actually appear in the text.”

“DITA topics are tailor-made for semantic processing,” IBM says. “However, current semantic processors can’t read the text of a topic to find out what it means. What’s missing is a formal declaration of the topic’s subject matter that a semantic processor can understand—like the address on an envelope that allows mail sorters to route the contents to the appropriate destination. Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) provides a standard for indicating the subject matter of content.

Related content

• The future of the Web is Semantic
• W3C SKOS Core Guide (draft)
• W3C SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification (draft)