Chp. 7: Ongoing review of Building Enterprise Taxonomies by Darin L. Stewart

Chapter seven of Darin L. Stewart’s Building Enterprise Taxonomies tackles the issue of interoperability of taxonomies. The obvious tool here is XML and its associated standards and tools. Stewart offers what amounts to a primer on XML and XSL, and discusses some of the software applications for XML and XSL creation, in addition to the Zthes implementation of ANSI/NSO Z39.19 and ISO 2788. Zthes is an interesting attempt to standardize and cement taxonomy models, by offering a well articulated abstract model and a substantial and detailed description of the taxonomy elements.

XML and XSL isn’t sexy stuff, but it’s necessary to understand that best practices suggest using the extensibility of XML. Stewart doesn’t go into any detail about how one actually develops a taxonomy in XML, and makes the necessary transformations in XSL, but he urges its use. This sort of future proofing might be overkill for many situations, but if you already have XML/XSL skills it’s likely worth the investment.