Topic Maps is an ISO Standard and describes the information management and interchange. It allows to build the abstract data model for knowledge collection, to connect them to relevant information resources and to apply the relation between the encoded knowledges. Topic Maps is suitable for knowledge representation in wide range of domains such as persons, locations, things, events etc.

Topic Maps is suited for improving the systems like searching tools, navigation tools or visualisation. It can also be applied in a question-and-answering system.

Over many years the Topic Maps technology is ranked as ISO 13250 standard. The first edition of ISO Standard 13250:2000 was based on SGML-based architecture and used the hypermedia linking language HyTime. Subsequently, the standard was reprocessed and defined as the Topic Maps Specification based on XML and XLink interchange syntax, replacing the SGML-based version.

Today, Topic Maps is the 13250 ISO standard and is a multi-part standard. Four parts of the standard have been already published. The fifth part is under development and is ranked as Draft International Standard. Each part describes and solves several problems. The seventh part has Working Draft status. The standard includes a data model, a reference model and a constraint language.

The standard is composed of the following parts:

• ISO/IEC 13250-2, Topic Maps — Data Model
• ISO/IEC 13250-3, Topic Maps — XML Syntax
• ISO/IEC 13250-4, Topic Maps — Canonicalization
• ISO/IEC 13250-5, Topic Maps — Reference Model
• ISO/IEC 13250-6, Topic Maps — Compact Syntax
• ISO/IEC 13250-7, Topic Maps — Graphical Notation

The next ISO specifications, which belong to the Topic Maps family are as follows:

• ISO/IEC 19756:2011: Information technology — Topic Maps — Constraint Language (TMCL)
• ISO/IEC DIS 18048: Information technology — SGML applications — Topic Map Query Language (TMQL)