XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web

Preface

In a former life, I built microprocessor-based data acquisition systems, originally for locating and monitoring wind and solar energy systems. I suppose it is fair to say that I have long been involved in roaming solution space. Along the way, farmers, on whose land the energy systems were often situated, discovered that my monitoring tools helped them form better predictions of fruit frost, irrigation needs, and pesticide needs. My program, which ran on an Apple II computer that had telephone access to the distributed monitoring stations, printed out large piles of data. Epiphany happened on the day that a manager of one of those monitoring systems came to me and asked, “What else is this data good for?” That was the day I entered the ...