NPCL Schema Editor for Visual Studio
NPCL is the NetworkedPlanet Constraint Language for topic maps. It is a schema language that allows an information architect to define the rules that specify what types of topics can be created, how they can be linked to each other by associations, and what types of occurrences and names they must or should have. NPCL is for topic maps what a database schema is to an RDBMS or what an XML DTD is to an XML document - it defines the "shape" of the data.
All NetworkedPlanet products make use of NPCL at some level. The SharePoint Module and EPiServer Module use NPCL to provide intuitive user interfaces for creating and editing topic information. In addition, the TMCore APIs provide developers with the ability to introspect and modify an NPCL schema either in its XML form or in its topic map representation inside the TMCore database, allowing a programmer to create their own validation routines to ensure consistency in a topic map.
The NPCL Schema Editor is a plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 that provides a visual, drag-and-drop editing environment for creating and modifying NPCL schemas in their XML form. The resulting schema can then be imported into TMCore using the tools provided with that product. This tool is provided free of charge and can be downloaded from here.