http://www.openlinksw.com/GData/127/?q=discourse
Kingsley Idehen's Blog Data Space
2026-06-09T16:28:59Z
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
About discourse
21
1
10
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1426
<p>Here is another "Linked Discourse" effort via a <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Blog" id="link-id13edcda8">blog</a> post that attempts to add perspective to a developing <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web">Web</a> based conversation. In this case, the conversation originates from <a href="http://geekaustin.org" id="link-id15a33728">Juan Sequeda</a>'s recent interview with <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/luxzia" id="link-id182a4a80">Jana Thompson</a> titled: <a href="http://geekaustin.org/2008/08/21/juan-sequeda-jana-thompson-necessity-semantic-web/" id="link-id146e1f40">Is the Semantic Web necessary (and feasible)?</a> </p> <blockquote> <cite>Jana: What are the benefits you see to the business community in adopting semantic technology? </cite> </blockquote> <p> <a href="http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this" id="link-id1941e3b0">Me</a>: Exposure, exploitation, of untapped treasure trove of interlinked <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data">data</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id13593fc0">information</a>, and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Knowledge" id="link-id1290c318">knowledge</a> across disparate IT infrastructure via conceptual entry points (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Entity" id="link-id107bad60">Entity</a> IDs / URIs / Data Source Names) that refer to as "<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Context_%28language_use%29" id="link-id15fab9f8">Context</a> Lenses".</p> <br /> <blockquote> <cite> Jana: Do you think these benefits are great enough for businesses to adopt the changes?</cite> </blockquote> <p> <a href="http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this" id="link-id0x584ffe0">Me</a>: Yes, infrastructural heterogeneity is a fact of corporate life (growth, mergers, acquisitions etc). Any technology that addresses these challenges is extremely important and valuable. Put differently, the opportunity costs associated with IT infrastructural heterogeneity remains high!</p> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Jana: How large do you think this impact will actually be?</cite> </blockquote> <p>Me: Huge, enterprise have been aware of their data, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id0x1b8057b0">information</a>, and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Knowledge" id="link-id0x1b3e3760">knowledge</a> treasure troves etc. for eons. Tapping into these via a materialization of the "<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information">information</a> at your fingertips" vision is something they've simply been waiting to pursue without any platform lock-in, for as long as I've been in this industry.</p> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Jana: I’ve heard, from contacts in the Bay Area, that they are skeptical of how large this impact of semantic technology will actually be on the web itself, but that the best uses of the technology are for fields such as medical information, or as you mentioned, geo-spatial data.</cite> </blockquote> <p>Me: Unfortunately, those people aren't connecting the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id10a337d8">Semantic Web</a> and open access to heterogeneous data sources, or the intrinsic value of holistic exploration location of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Entity" id="link-id0xaa58c520">entity</a> based data networks (aka <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id188a1910">Linked Data</a>).</p> <br /> <blockquote> <cite> Jana: Are semantic technologies going to be part of the web because of people championing the cause or because it is actually a necessary step?</cite> </blockquote> <p>Me: <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id0x9eb9aca0">Linked Data</a> technology on the Web is a vital extension of the current Web. Semantic Technology without the "Web" component, or what I refer to as "Semantics Inside only" solutions, simply offer little or no value as Web enhancements based on their incongruence with the essence of the Web i.e., "Open Linkage" and no Silos! A nice looking Silo is still a Silo.</p> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Jana: In the early days of the web, there was an explosion of new websites, due to the ease of learning HTML, from a business to a person to some crackpot talking about aliens. Even today, CSS and XHTML are not so difficult to learn that a determined person can’t learn them from W3C or other tutorials easily. If OWL becomes the norm for websites, what do you think the effects will be on the web? Do you think it is easy enough to learn that it will be readily adopted as part of the standard toolkit for web developers for businesses?</cite> </blockquote> <p>Me: Correction, learning HTML had nothing to do with the Web's success. The value proposition of the Web simply reached critical mass and you simply couldn't afford to not be part of it. The easiest route to joining the Web juggernaut was a Web Page hosted on a Web Site. The question right now is: what's the equivalent driver for the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data">Linked Data</a> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Giant_Global_Graph" id="link-id12e25c98">Web</a> bearing in mind the initial Web bootstrap. My answer is simply this: Open Data Access i.e., getting beyond the data silos that have inadvertently emerged from Web 2.0.</p> <br /> <blockquote> <cite> Jana: Following the same theme, do you think this will lead to an <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Internet" id="link-id17041398">internet</a> full of corporate-controlled websites, with sites only written by developers rather than individuals?</cite> </blockquote> <p> Me: Not at all, we will have an <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Internet" id="link-id0x16a4abe0">Internet</a> owned by it's participants i.e., You and the agents that work on your behalf.</p> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Jana: So, you are imagining technologies such as <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Drupal" id="link-id107d1d70">Drupal</a> or <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/WordPress" id="link-id13f48db8">Wordpress</a>, that allow users to manage sites without a great deal of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Knowledge">knowledge</a> of the nuts and bolts of current web technologies?</cite> </blockquote> <p>Me: Not at all! I envisage simple forms that provide conduits to powerful meshes of interlinked data spaces associated with Web users.</p> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Jana: Given all of the buzz, and my own familiarity with ontology, I am just very curious if the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id0x1955d360">semantic web</a> is truly necessary? </cite> </blockquote> <p>Me:This question is no different than saying: I hear the Web is becoming a Database, and I wonder if a Data Dictionary is necessary, or even if access to structured data is necessary. It's also akin to saying: I accept "Search" as my only mechanism for Web interaction even though in reality, I really want to be able to "Find" and "Process" relevant things at a quicker rate than I do today, relative to the amount of information, and information processing time, at my disposal.</p> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Jana: Will it be worth it to most people to go away from the web in its current form, with keyword searches on sites like Google, to a richer and more interconnected internet with potentially better search technology?</cite> </blockquote> <p>Me: As stated above, we need to add "Find" to the portfolio of functions we seek to perform against the Web. "Finding" and "Searching" are mutually inclusive pursuits at different ends of an activity spectrum.</p> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Jana: For our more technical readers, I have a few additional questions: If no standardization comes about for mapping relational databases to domain ontologies, how do you see that as influencing the decisions about adoption of semantic technology by businesses? After all, the success of technology often lives or dies on its ease of adoption.</cite> </blockquote> <p>Me: Standardization of<a href="http://esw.w3.org/topic/Rdb2RdfXG/StateOfTheArt" id="link-id10abbc30"> RDBMS to RDF Mapping</a> is not the critical success factor here (of course it would be nice). As stated earlier, the issue of data integration that arises from IT infrastructural heterogeneity has been with decision makers in the enterprise for ever. The problem is now seeping into the broader consumer realm via Web ubiquity. The mistakes made in the enterprise realm are now playing out in the consumer Web realm. In both realms the critical success factors are:</p> <ol> <li> Scalable productivity relative to exponential growth of data generated across Intranets, Extranets, and the Internet</li> <li>Concept based <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Context_%28language_use%29" id="link-id0x114e6888">Context</a> Lenses that transcend logical and physical data heterogeneity by putting dereferencable URIs in front of the Line of Business Application Data and/or Web Data Spaces such as Blogs, Wikis, Discussion Forums etc.).</li> </ol>
Is the Semantic Web necessary (and feasible)?
2008-08-29T15:08:12Z
2008-08-29T11:08:12.000002-04:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1280
<p>I've been a little busier than usual, of late. So busy, that even minimal blog based discourse participation has been a challenge. Anyway, during this quiet period, a number of interesting data streams have come my way that relate to <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/wiki/main/Main/OdsIndex" id="link-id142b7e40">OpenLink Data Spaces</a> (ODS). Thus, in typical fashion, I'll use this post (via <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Uniform_Resource_Identifier" id="link-id1474d810">URI</a>s) to contribute a few nodes to the <a href="http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/215" id="link-id149d8210">Giant Global Graph </a>that is the Web of Structured <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id139f9190">Linked Data</a>, also known as the <a href="http:dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id1470e588">Data Web, Semantic Data Web, or Web of Data</a> (also see <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/weblog/public/search.vspx?blogid=127&q='data%20web'&type=text&output=html" id="link-id13a4f828">prior Data Web posts</a>).</p> <p>Here goes:</p> <ol> <li> <a href="http://bizcast.typepad.com/" id="link-id14769268">Alan Wilensky</a> recalls his <a href="http://bizcast.typepad.com/clients/2007/11/social-networks.html" id="link-id14478c48">early encounters with OpenLink Data Spaces</a> (circa. 2004)</li> <li> <a href="http://www.vanirsystems.co.uk/foaf.rdf" id="link-id14516938">Daniel Lewis</a> shares his "<a href="http://vanirsystems.com/danielsblog/2007/11/29/where-is-the-semantic-web-well-it-is-here-already/" id="link-id149e2518">state of the Semantic Data Web"</a> findings</li> <li> <a href="http://vanirsystems.com/danielsblog/2007/11/30/openlink-data-spaces/" id="link-id14cddaf0">Daniel Lewis experiences OpenLink Data Space first hand</a> en route to creating Data Spaces in the Clouds (the <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1261" id="link-id146c35c8">Fourth Platform</a>).</li> </ol> <p>In addition, in one week, courtesy of the Web, UK Semnantic Web Gatherings in <a href="http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/2007/11/cindy_che_and_other_interestin.php" id="link-id14304738">Bristol</a> and <a href="http://oxford.geeknights.net/2007/nov-28th/" id="link-id145589d8">Oxford</a>, I <a href="http://vanirsystems.com/danielsblog/2007/11/21/wanted-job/" id="link-id1399de08">discover</a>, interview, and employ Daniel :-) Imagine how long this would have taken to pull off via the Document Web, assuming I would even discover Daniel.</p> <p>As with all things these days, the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web" id="link-id1477a7e0">Web</a> and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Internet" id="link-id14c3f428">Internet</a> change everything, which includes talent discovery and recruitment.</p> <p>A Global Social graph that is a mesh of Linked Data enables the process of recruitment, marketing, and other elements of busines management to be condensed down to a sending powerful beams across the aforementioned Graph :-) The only variable pieces are the traversal paths exposed to your beam via the beam's entry point URI. In my case, <a href="http://kidehen.idehen.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this" id="link-id1395e5f0">I have a single URI</a> that exposes a Graph of critical paths for the Blogosphere (i.e data spaces of RSS Atom Feeds). Thus, I can discover if your profile matches the requirements associated with an opening at OpenLink Software (most of the time) before you do :-)</p> <p>BTW - I just noticed that John Breslin described ODS as social-graph++ in his recent post, titled: <a href="http://www.johnbreslin.com/blog/2007/11/30/tales-from-the-sioc-o-sphere-part-6/" id="link-id14c82bc8">Tales from the SIOC-o-sphere, part 6</a>. In a funny way, this reminds of a post from the early blogosphere days about <a href="http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/1427/commercial-server-supports-four-weblog-apis" id="link-id14a24c58">platforms and Weblog APIs </a>(circa. 2003) about ODS (then exposed via the Blog Platform realm of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Virtuoso_Universal_Server" id="link-id14745100">Virtuoso</a>).</p>
Discussion: OpenLink Data Spaces
2007-12-01T20:26:12Z
2007-12-01T15:26:12-05:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1090
<p>This post is part contribution to the general Web 3.0 / Data-Web / Semantic Web discourse, and part experiment / demonstration of the Data Web.</p> <p>I came across a pretty deep comments trail about the aforementioned items on <a href="http://avc.blogs.com">Fred Wilson's blog</a> (aptly titled: A VC) under the subject heading: <a href="http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2006/11/web_30_is_the_s.html">Web 3.0 Is The Semantic Web.</a> </p> <p>Contributions to the general Semantic Web discourse by way of responses to valuable questions and commentary contributed by a Semantic Web skeptic (Ed Addison who may be this <a href="http://www.csee.umbc.edu/cikm/1998/addison-abstract.html">Ed Addison according to Google</a>):</p> <p></p> <blockquote>Ed, Responses to your points re. Semantic Web Matrialization: <ul> << 1) ontologies can be created and maintained by text extractors and crawlers" >> <p>Ontologies will be developed by Humans. This process has already commenced and far more landscape has been covered that you may be aware of. For instance, there is an Ontology for Online Communities with Semantics factored in. More importantly, most Blogs, Wikis, and other "points of presence" on the Web are already capable of generating Instance Data for this Ontology by way of the underlying platforms that drive these things. The Ontology is called: SIOC (<a href="http://sioc-project.org">Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities</a>).</p> </ul> <ul> << 2) the entire web can be marked up, semantically indexed, and maintained by spiders without human assistance >> <p>Most of it can, and already is :-) Human assistance should, and would, be on an "exception basis" a preferred use of human time (IMHO). We do not need to annotate the Web manually when this labor intensive process can be automated (see my earlier comments).</p> </ul> <ul> << 3) inference over the semantic web does not require an extremely deep heuristic search down multiple, redundant, cyclical pathways with many islands that are disconnected >> <p>When you have a foundation layer of RDF Data (generated in the manner I've discussed above), you then have a substrate that's far more palatable to Intelligent Reasoning. Note, the Semantic Web is made of many layers. The critical layer at this juncture is the Data-Web (Web of RDF Data). Note, when I refer to RDF I am not referring to RDF/XML the serialization format, I am referring to the Data Model (a Graph).</p> </ul> <ul> << 4) the web becomes smart enough to eliminate websites or data elements that are incorrect, misleading, false, or just plain lousy >> <p>The Semantic Web vision is not about eliminating Web Sites (The Hypertext-Document-Web). It is simply about adding another dimension of interaction to the Web. This is just like the Services-Web dimension as delivered by Web 2.0.</p> We are simply evolving within an innovation continuum. There is no mutual exclusivity about any of the Web Dimensions since they collectively provide us with a more powerful infrastructure for building and exploiting "collective wisdom". </ul> </blockquote> <p>As for the Data-Web experiment part of this post, I would expect to see this post exposed as another contribution to the Data-Web via the <a href="http://pingthesemanticweb.com">PingTheSemanticWeb</a> notification service :-) Implying, that all the relevant parts of this conversation are in a format (Instance Data for the <a href="http://rdfs.org/sioc/spec/">SIOC Ontology</a>) that is available for further use in a myriad of forms.</p>
Contd: Web 3.0 Commentary etc..
2006-11-24T18:30:08Z
2006-11-24T13:30:08.000001-05:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1424
<p>After reading <a href="http://blog.crunchbase.com/2008/08/26/building-a-semantic-web-interview-with-benjamin-nowack/" id="link-id16b8e0e0">Bengee's interview with CrunchBase</a>, I decided to knock up a quick interview remix as part of my usual attempt to add to the developing discourse.</p> <blockquote> <cite><a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/" id="link-id17c8e7b8">CrunchBase</a>: When we released the <a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/help/api" id="link-id16681f68">CrunchBase API</a>, you were one of the first developers to step up and quickly released a <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com's%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1395" id="link-id1016d5f0">CrunchBase Sponger Cartridge</a>. Can you explain what a CrunchBase Sponger Cartridge is?</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote> <a href="http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this" id="link-id13243300">Me</a>: A Sponger Cartridge is a <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data">data</a> access driver for <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web">Web</a> Resources that plugs into our <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com" id="link-id17042f08">Virtuoso</a> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Virtuoso_Universal_Server" id="link-id1399b588">Universal Server</a> (DBMS and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id137fd188">Linked Data</a> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Giant_Global_Graph" id="link-id100b23d8">Web</a> Server combo amongst other things). It uses the internal structure of a resource and/or a web service associated with a resource, to materialize an RDF based <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Resource_Description_Framework" id="link-id10418750">Linked Data graph</a> that essentially describes the resource via its properties (Attributes & Relationships). </blockquote> <br /> <img src="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/presentations/Creating_Deploying_Exploiting_Linked_Data2/images/ldp4.png" /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>CrunchBase: And what inspired you to create it?</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote> <a href="http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this" id="link-id12fa60c0">Me</a>: Bengee built a new space with your data, and we've built a space on the fly from your data which still resides in your domain. Either solution extols the virtues of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id101a8d28">Linked Data</a> i.e. the ability to explore relationships across data items with high degrees of serendipity (also colloquially known as: following-your-nose pattern in <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id14a3ff30">Semantic Web</a> circles).</blockquote> <blockquote> <a href="http://cb.semsol.org/" id="link-id182a0170">Bengee</a> posted a notice to the <a href="http://esw.w3.org/topic/SweoIG/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenData" id="link-id131e8d10">Linking Open Data Community</a>'s public <a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-lod/2008Jul/0110.html" id="link-id11dd0720">mailing list announcing his effort</a>. Bearing in mind the fact that we've been using <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen/?id=1144" id="link-id117cf6e8">middleware to mesh the realms of Web 2.0 and the Linked Data Web</a> for a while, it was a no-brainer to knock something up based on the conceptual similarities between <a href="http://wikicompany.org/wiki/Main_Page" id="link-id13b87a68">Wikicompany</a> and CrunchBase. In a sense, a quadrant of orthogonality is what immediately came to mind re. Wikicompany, CrunchBase, Bengee's RDFization efforts, and ours.</blockquote> <blockquote>Bengee created an RDF based <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id133c8fc8">Linked Data</a> warehouse based on the data exposed by your API, which is exposed via the <a href="http://cb.semsol.org/" id="link-id1826f928">Semantic CrunchBase</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Spaces" id="link-id102d8890">data space</a>. In our case we've taken the "RDFization on the fly" approach which produces a transient <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id16a0b8d0">Linked Data</a> View of the CrunchBase data exposed by your APIs. Our approach is in line with our world view: all resources on the Web are data sources, and the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id1668e6c8">Linked Data</a> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Giant_Global_Graph" id="link-id188e7da0">Web</a> is about incorporating HTTP into the naming scheme of these data sources so that the conventional <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Uniform_Resource_Locator" id="link-id13490710">URL</a> based hyperlinking mechanism can be used to access a structured description of a resource, which is then transmitted using a range negotiable representation formats. In addition, based on the fact that we house and publish a lot of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id169aa568">Linked Data</a> on the Web (e.g. <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/DBpedia" id="link-id10af10e8">DBpedia</a>, <a href="http://www.pingthesemanticweb.com/about/" id="link-id10a2b710">PingTheSemanticWeb</a>, and others), we've also automatically meshed Crunchbase data with related data in <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/DBpedia" id="link-id1403cd40">DBpedia</a> and Wikicompany data.</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>CrunchBase: Do you know of any apps that are using CrunchBase Cartridge to enhance their functionality?</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote> <a href="http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this" id="link-id177d24c8">Me</a>: Yes, the <a href="http://ode.openlinksw.com" id="link-id10725ca0">OpenLink Data Explorer</a> which provides CrunchBase site visitors with the option to explore the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id17dedea8">Linked Data</a> in the CrunchBase <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Spaces" id="link-id13f02a00">data space</a>. It also allows them to "Mesh" (rather than "Mash") CrunchBase data with other <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id11fb3ba0">Linked Data</a> sources on the Web without writing a single line of code. </blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>CrunchBase: You have been immersed in the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id12e18a00">Semantic Web</a> movement for a while now. How did you first get interested in the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id15132110">Semantic Web</a>?</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote> <a href="http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this" id="link-id0xddaa9c8">Me</a>: We saw the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id188b3330">Semantic Web</a> as a vehicle for standardizing conceptual views of heterogeneous data sources via <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Context_%28language_use%29" id="link-id10350978">context</a> lenses (URIs). In 1998 as part of our strategy to expand our business beyond the development and deployment of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Open_Database_Connectivity" id="link-id171d6798">ODBC</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Java_Database_Connectivity" id="link-id138120a0">JDBC</a>, and OLE-DB data providers, we decided to build a <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Virtual_Database" id="link-id13ea6618">Virtual Database</a> Engine (see: <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/dataspace/dav/wiki/Main/VOSHistory" id="link-id11a4fa30">Virtuoso History</a>), and in doing so we sought a standards based mechanism for the conceptual output of the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Federated_database_system" id="link-id101a1248">data virtualization</a> effort. As of the time of the <a href="http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html" id="link-id18882cf8">seminal unveiling of the Semantic Web in 1998</a> we were clear about two things, in relation to the effects of the Web and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Internet" id="link-id12fa2c58">Internet</a> data management infrastructure inflections: 1) Existing DBMS technology had reached it limits 2) Web Servers would ultimately hit their functional limits. These fundamental realities compelled us to develop <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com" id="link-id102b09a0">Virtuoso</a> with an eye to leveraging the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id11984d98">Semantic Web</a> as a vehicle from completing its technical roadmap.</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>CrunchBase: Can you put into layman’s terms exactly what RDF and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SPARQL" id="link-id1066dcf0">SPARQL</a> are and why they are important? Do they only matter for developers or will they extend past developers at some point and be used by website visitors as well?</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>Me: RDF (Resource Description Framework) is a Graph based Data Model that facilitates resource description using the <a href="http://www.eslincanada.com/englishlesson2.html" id="link-id178b94a8">Subject, Predicate, and Object principle</a>. Associated with the core data model, as part of the overall framework, are a number of markup languages for expressing your descriptions (just as you express presentation markup semantics in HTML or document structure semantics in XML) that include: <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/RDFa" id="link-id188db0a8">RDFa</a> (simple extension of HTML markup for embedding descriptions of things in a page), N3 (a human friendly markup for describing resources), RDF/XML (a machine friendly markup for describing resources).</blockquote> <blockquote> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SPARQL" id="link-id188c2030">SPARQL</a> is the query language associated with the RDF Data Model, just as <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SQL" id="link-id13f0ffe0">SQL</a> is a query language associated with the Relational Database Model. Thus, when you have RDF based structured and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id166874d0">linked data</a> on the Web, you can query against Web using <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SPARQL" id="link-id1016cc98">SPARQL</a> just as you would against an <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Oracle_Database" id="link-id101c9708">Oracle</a>/<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SQL" id="link-id11cb0b18">SQL</a> Server/<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/IBM_DB2" id="link-id10760ec0">DB2</a>/<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/IBM_Informix" id="link-id1066c8c0">Informix</a>/<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Ingres" id="link-id18894f40">Ingres</a>/<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/MySQL" id="link-iddc9ebb0">MySQL</a>/etc.. DBMS using <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SQL" id="link-id1030d120">SQL</a>. That's it in a nutshell.</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>CrunchBase: On your website you wrote that “RDF and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SPARQL" id="link-id168e9ad0">SPARQL</a> as productivity boosters in everyday web development”. Can you elaborate on why you believe that to be true?</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>Me: I think the ability to discern a formal description of anything via its discrete properties is of immense value re. productivity, especially when the capability in question results in a graph of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id0x179f6328">Linked Data</a> that isn't confined to a specific host operating system, database engine, application or service, programming language, or development framework. RDF <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data">Linked Data</a> is about infrastructure for the true materialization of the "<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id13e475b8">Information</a> at Your Fingertips" vision of yore. Even though it's taken the emergence of RDF Linked Data to make the aforementioned vision tractable, the comprehension of the vision's intrinsic value have been clear for a very long time. Most organizations and/or individuals are quite familiar with the adage: <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Knowledge" id="link-id13e38a30">Knowledge</a> is Power, well there isn't any <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Knowledge" id="link-id188b7348">knowledge</a> without accessible <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id140415d0">Information</a>, and there isn't any accessible <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id11a976e8">Information</a> without accessible Data. The Web has always be grounded in accessibility to data (albeit via compound container documents called Web Pages).</blockquote> <blockquote>Bottom line, RDF based Linked Data is about Open <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Reference_(computer_science)" id="link-id1206bfb8">Data access by reference</a> using URIs (HTTP based <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Entity" id="link-idfaa6ce0">Entity</a> IDs / Data Object IDs / Data Source Names), and as I said earlier, the intrinsic value is pretty obvious bearing in mind the costs associated with integrating disparate and heterogeneous data sources -- across intranets, extranets, and the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Internet" id="link-id188ecc68">Internet</a>.</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>CrunchBase: In his definition of Web 3.0, Nova Spivack proposes that the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id12e2d968">Semantic Web</a>, or Semanti<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/C_(programming_language)" id="link-id105744c0">c</a> Web technologies, will be force behind much of the innovation that will occur during Web 3.0. Do you agree with Nova Spivack? What role, if any, do you feel the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id13fa4218">Semantic Web</a> will play in Web 3.0?</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>Me: I agree with Nova. But I see Web 3.0 as a phase within the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id188c9000">Semantic Web</a> innovation continuum. Web 3.0 exists because Web 2.0 exists. Both of these Web versions express usage and technology focus patterns. Web 2.0 is about the use of Open Source technologies to fashion Web Services that are ultimately used to drive proprietary Software as Service (SaaS) style solutions. Web 3.0 is about the use of "Smart Data Access" to fashion a new generation of Linked Data aware Web Services and solutions that exploit the federated nature of the Web to maximum effect; proprietary branding will simply be conveyed via quality of data (cleanliness, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Context_%28language_use%29" id="link-id188d2ef8">context</a> fidelity, and comprehension of privacy) exposed by URIs.</blockquote> <p>Here are some examples of the CrunchBase Linked Data <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Spaces" id="link-id122756f8">Space</a>, as projected via our CruncBase Sponger Cartridge:</p> <ol> <li> <a href="http://demo.openlinksw.com/rdfbrowser2/?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.crunchbase.com%2Fcompany%2Famazon" id="link-id13e0fd18">Amazon.com</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://demo.openlinksw.com/rdfbrowser2/?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.crunchbase.com%2Fcompany%2Fmicrosoft" id="link-id13eef9e0">Microsoft</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://demo.openlinksw.com/rdfbrowser2/?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.crunchbase.com%2Fcompany%2Fgoogle" id="link-id13fe47a0">Google</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://demo.openlinksw.com/rdfbrowser2/?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.crunchbase.com%2Fcompany%2Fapple" id="link-id170c73b8">Apple</a> </li> </ol>
Crunchbase & Semantic Web Interview (Remix - Update 1)
2008-08-28T00:35:15Z
2008-08-27T20:35:15-04:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1513
<p>As indicated in posts from Fred Giasson and <a href="http://community.linkeddata.org/dataspace/person/mkbergman#this" id="link-id152486c0">Mike Bergman</a>, the <a href="http://zitgist.com/about/" id="link-id1163fb28">Zitgist</a> incubation effort that contributed to the delivery of vital <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id1163ff68">Linked Data</a> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Giant_Global_Graph" id="link-id112a1338">Web</a> infrastructure components such as <a href="http://www.talkdigger.com/" id="link-id11938fe8">TalkDigger</a> (discourse discovery and participation), <a href="http://www.pingthesemanticweb.com/about/" id="link-id15da46f0">PingTheSemanticWeb</a> (ground-zero <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data">data</a> source for most <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id15ff68f0">Semantic Web</a> search engines), <a href="http://umbel.org/about/" id="link-id112fddb0">UMBEL</a> (binding layer for Upper and Lower Ontologies amongst other things), <a href="http://musicontology.com" id="link-id157ff9e0">Music Ontology</a> (enabling meaningful description of Music), and <a href="http://bibliontology.com/" id="link-id11459180">Bibliographic Ontology</a> (enabling meaningful description of Bibliographic content), is now ready to continue its business development and technology growth as a going concern known as <a href="http://www.structureddynamics.com/" id="link-id110c3b50">Structured Dynamics</a>.</p> <p>With great joy and pride, I wish Structured Dynamics all the success they deserve. Naturally, the collaborations and close relationship between <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/organization/openlink#this" id="link-id11849528">OpenLink Software</a> and its latest technology partner will continue -- especially as we collectively work towards a more comprehendible and pragmatic Web of Linked Data for developers (across Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and beyond), end-users (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id15246af8">information</a>- and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Knowledge" id="link-id15d27888">knowledge</a>-workers), and entrepreneurs (driven by quality and tangible value contribution).</p> <h3>Related</h3> <ul> <li> <a href="http://fgiasson.com/blog/index.php/2009/01/02/structured-dynamics-for-the-new-year/" id="link-id13bf7fd0">Structured Dynamics for the New Year</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.mkbergman.com/?p=468" id="link-id111e9e88">A New Year, a New Beginning and a New Venture</a> </li> </ul>
Linked Data Web Collaborators: Introducing Structured Dynamics
2009-01-03T04:27:26Z
2009-01-02T23:27:26-05:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1362
<p>Unfortunately, I could only spend 4 days at the recent <a href="http://www2008.org/" id="link-id196acf60">WWW2008</a> event in <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Beijing" id="link-id1974fe28">Beijing</a> (I departed the morning following the <a href="http://events.linkeddata.org/ldow2008/" id="link-id1863f858">Linked Data Workshop</a>), so I couldn't take my slot on the "Commercializing the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id18990f90">Semantic Web</a> panel" etc.. Anyway, thanks to the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web">Web</a> I can still inject my points of view in the broad Web based discourse. Well so I hoped, when I attempted to post a comment to Paul Miller's ZDNet domain hosted <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Blog" id="link-id180d6750">blog</a> thread titled: <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/semantic-web/?p=132" id="link-id12d206c0">Commercialising the Semantic Web</a>.</p> <p>Unfortunately, the cost of completing ZDNet's unwieldy signup process simply exceeded the benefits of dropping my comments in their particular space :-( Thus, I'll settle for a trackback ping instead.</p> <p>What follows is the cut and paste of my intended comment contributions to Paul's post.</p> <p>Paul,</p> <p> As discussed earlier this week during <a href="http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/2008/05/kingsley-idehen-talks-about-openlink-software-linked-data-and-the-semantic-web.php" id="link-id1332fb48">our podcast session</a>, commercialization of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id17382338">Semantic Web</a> technology shouldn't be a mercurial matter at this stage in the game :-) It's all about looking at how it provides value :-)</p> <p>From the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id10d4f4a8">Linked Data</a> angle, the ability to produce, dispatch, and exploit "<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Context_%28language_use%29" id="link-id13bed160">Context</a>" across an array of "Perspectives" from a plethora of disparate <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data" id="link-id1731e5f0">data</a> sources on the Web and/or behind corporate firewalls, offers immense commercial value.</p> <p> <a href="http://developer.yahoo.com/searchmonkey/" id="link-id1975d248">Yahoo's Searchmonkey</a> effort will certainly bring clarity to some of the points I made during the podcast re. the role of URIs as "value consumption tickets" (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data" id="link-id173eb7b0">Data</a> Services are exposed via URIs). There has to be a trigger (in user space) that compels Web users to seek broader, or simply varied, perspectives as a response to <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data" id="link-id0x1c7e7f60">data</a> encountered on the Web. Yahoo! is about to put this light on in a big way (imho).</p> <p>The "self annotating" nature of the Web is what ultimately drives the manifestation of the long awaited <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id0xa18a83e8">Semantic Web</a>. I believe I postulated about <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/weblog/public/search.vspx?blogid=127&q=self%20annotation&type=text&output=html" id="link-id173d7458">"Self Annotation & the Semantic Web" in a number of prior posts</a> which, by the way, should be <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/weblog/public/search.vspx?blogid=127&type=text&kwds=self%20annotation&OpenSearch" id="link-id10b12208">DataRSS compatible right now</a> due to Yahoo's support of OpenSearch <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data">Data</a> Providers (which this <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Blog" id="link-id170b8df8">Blog</a> Space has been for eons).</p> <p>Today, have many communities adding strucuture to the Web (via their respective tools of preference) without explicitly realizing what they are contributing. Every RSS/Atom feed, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Tag" id="link-id183d5178">Tag</a>, Weblog, Shared Bookmark, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/WikiWord" id="link-id10c5e758">Wikiword</a>, Microformat, Microformat++ (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Embedded_RDF" id="link-id16d8ee40">eRDF</a> or <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/RDFa" id="link-id1059a688">RDFa</a>), <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/GRDDL" id="link-id1090ae10">GRDDL</a> stylesheet, and RDFizer etc.. is a piece of structured data.</p> <p>Finally, the different communities are all finding ways to work together (thank heavens!) and the results are going to be cataclysmic when it all plays out :-)</p> <p>Data, Structure, and Extraction are the keys to the Semantic Life! First you get the Data in a container (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id180e5648">information</a> resource), and then you add Structure to the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id103801e0">information</a> resource (RSS, Atom, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Microformats" id="link-id17825e40">microformats</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/RDFa" id="link-id189a8738">RDFa</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Embedded_RDF" id="link-id1933d5c0">eRDF</a>, SIOC, FOAF, etc.), once you have Structure RDFization (i.e. transformation to <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id19744878">Linked Data</a>) is a synch thanks to <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Resource_Description_Framework" id="link-id180dde30">RDF</a> Middleware (as per <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/weblog/public/search.vspx?blogid=127&type=text&kwds=self%20annotation&OpenSearch" id="link-id16dc3130">earlier RDF middleware posts</a>).</p>
Commercializing the Semantic Web
2008-05-16T20:15:29Z
2008-05-16T16:15:29.000001-04:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/834
<p>My entire time in the IT industry has been spent primarily trying to develop, architect, test, mentor, evangelize, and educate about one simple subject: Standards Appreciation!</p> <p>The trouble with "Standards Appreciation" is that vendors see standards from the following perspectives primarily:</p> <ol> <li>Yet another opportunity to lock-in the customer <br /></li> <li>If point 1. fails then undermine the standard vociferously (an activity that takes many covert forms; attack performance, security, and maturity)<br /></li> <li>Developers don't like standards (the real reason for this is to-do lists and timeframes in most cases)</li></ol> <p><a href="http://koranteng.blogspot.com">Korateng Ofusu-Amaah</a> provides insightful perspective on the issues above, in a recent "must read" <a href="http://koranteng.blogspot.com/2005/05/unloved-html-button-and-other.html">blog post</a> about how this dysfunctionality plays out today in the realm of HTML Buttons and Forms. Here are some notebable excerpts:</p> <blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <p><em>"Instead my discourse devolved into a case of I told you so, a kind of Old Testament view of things instead of the softer New Age stylings that are in vogue these days. Sure there was a little concern for the users that had been hurt by lost data, but there was almost no empathy for the developers who had to lose their weekends furiously reworking their applications to </em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004XQMV/korantenstoli-20"></a><em>do the right thing especially because it appeared that they would rather persist in trying to do the wrong thing. <br /><br />The sentiment behind that mini tempest-in-a-teapot however was a recognition of the fact that <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">those who have been quietly evangelizing the web style were talking about the wrong thing and to the wrong people."</span> <br /><br />...</em></p> <p><em>"..As application developers we should ask for better forms, we should be demanding of browser makers things like XForms or Web Forms 2.0 to make sure that we can go beyond the kind of stilted usability that we currently have. Our users would appreciate our efforts in that vein but for now, they know what to expect. Until then application developers should push back when we are told to "do the wrong thing".</em></p></blockquote> <p>There is an unfortunate mindset trend at the current time that espouses: "Sloppiness" is good, and "Simple" justifies inadequacy at all times. Today, the real focus of most development endeavours is popularity first and coherance (backward compatibility, standards compliance, security, scalability etc.) a distant second, if you can simply make things popular then that justifies the sloppiness (acquisition, VC money, Blogosphere Juice etc.). Especially as someone else will ultimately have to deal with the predictable ramifications of the sloppiness. </p> <p>Standards are critical to the success of IT investment within any enterprise, but standards are difficult to design, write, implement, and then comprehend; due to the inherent requirement for abstraction - it's a top down, as opposed to bottom up, process.</p> <p>Vendors will never genuinely embrace standards, until IT decision makers demand standards compliance of them, by demonstrating a penchant for smelling out "<a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html">leaky abstractions</a>" embedded within product implementations. Naturally, this requires a fundamental change of mindset for most decision makers. It means moving away from the "this analyst said...", "I heard that company X is going to deliver....", "I read that .....", "I saw that demo..." approach to product evaluation, to a more knowledgeable evaluation process that seeks out the What, Why, and How of any prospective IT solution. </p> <p>Knowledge empowers all of the time. It's a gift that stands the test of time once you invest some time in its acquisition (unfortunately this gift isn't free!). Ignorance with all its superficial seduction (free and widely available!), is temporary bliss at best, and nothing but heartache over time. </p>
Standards Contempt Revisited
2006-06-22T12:56:58Z
2006-06-22T08:56:58-04:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1601
<p>Thanks to the <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/" id="link-id114eb070">TechCrunch</a> post titled: <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/01/ten-technologies-2010/" id="link-id1146e550">Ten Technologies That Will Rock 2010</a>, I've been able to quickly construct a derivative post that condenses the ten item list down to a Single Technology That Will Rock 2010 :-)</p> <p>Sticking with the TechCrunch layout, here is why all roads simply lead to <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id11141d50">Linked Data</a> come 2010 and beyond: </p> <ol> <li> <strong>The Tablet: </strong>a new form factor addition re. <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Internet" id="link-id13f09418">Internet</a> and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web">Web</a> application hosts which is just another way of saying: Linked Data will be accessible from Tablet applications.</li> <li> <strong>Geo:</strong> GPS chips are now standard features of mobile phones, so <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/23/location-2010/" id="link-id112cfdd0">geolocation</a> is increasingly becoming a necessary feature for any killer app. Thus, GeoSpatial Linked Data and GeopSpatial Queries are going to be a critical success factor for any endeavor that seeks to engage mobile applications developers and ultimately their end-users. Basiacally, you want to be able to perform Esoteric Search from these devices of the form: Find Vendors of a Camcorder (e.g., with a Zoom Factor: Weight Ratio of X) within a 2km Radius of my current location. Or how many items from my WishList are available from a Vendor within a 2km radius of my current location. Conversely, provide Vendors with the ability to spot potential Customers within a 2km of a given "clicks & mortar" location (e.g. BestBuy store).</li> <li> <strong>Realtime Search: </strong>Rich Structured Profiles that leverage standards such as <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Friend_of_a_friend" id="link-id140ece38">FOAF</a> and <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/foaf_ssl_creating_a_global" id="link-id11856318">FOAF+SSL</a> will enable Highly Personalized Realtime Search (HPRS) without compromisng privacy. Tecnically, this is about <a href="http://esw.w3.org/topic/WebID" id="link-id13ec6260">WebID</a>s securely bound to X.509 Certificates, providing access to verifiable and highly navigable Personal Profile <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data">Data</a> Spaces that also double as personal search index entry points.</li> <li> <strong>Chrome OS: </strong>Just another operating system for exploiting the burgeoning Web of Linked Data</li> <li> <strong>HTML5: </strong>Courtesy of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/RDFa" id="link-id115b08f0">RDFa</a>, just another mechanism for exposing Linked Data by making HTML+RDFa a bona fide markup for <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Metadata" id="link-id1195b070">metadata</a> (i.e., format for describing real world objects via their attribute-value graphs)</li> <li> <strong>Mobile Video:</strong> Simplifies the production and sharing of Video annotations (comments, reviews etc.) en route to creating rich Linked Discourse Data Spaces.</li> <li> <strong>Augmented Reality:</strong> Ditto</li> <li> <strong>Mobile Transactions:</strong> As per points 1&2 above, Vendor Discovery and Transaction Conusmation will increasingly be driven by high SDQ applications. The "Funnel Effect" (more choices based on individual preferences) will be a critical success factor for any one operating in the Mobile Transaction realm. Note, without Linked Data you cannot deliver scalable solutions that handle the combined requirements of: SDQ, "Funnel Effect", and Mobile Device form factor, will simply maginify the importance of Web accessible Linked Data.</li> <li> <strong>Android:</strong> An additional platform for items 1-8; basically, 2010 isn't going to be an iPhone only zone. Personally, this reminds <a href="http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this" id="link-id111ab5e8">me</a> of a battle from the past i.e., Microsoft vs Apple, re. desktop computing dominance. Google has studied history very well :-)</li> <li> <strong>Social CRM:</strong> this is simply about applying points 1-9 alongide the construction of Linked Data from eCRM Data Spaces.</li> </ol> <p>As I've stated in the past (across a variety of mediums), you cannot build applications that have long term value without addressing the following issues:</p> <ol> <li>Data Item or Object Identity</li> <li>Data Structure -- Data Models</li> <li>Data Representation -- Data Model <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Entity" id="link-id1148eaf8">Entity</a> & Relationships Representation mechanism (as delivered by metadata oriented markup)</li> <li>Data Storage -- Database Management Systems</li> <li>Data Access -- Data Access Protocols </li> <li>Data Presentation -- How you present Views and Reports from Structured Data Sources</li> <li>Data Security -- Data Access Policies</li> </ol> <p>The items above basically showcase the very essence of the HTTP <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Uniform_Resource_Identifier" id="link-id1239af68">URI</a> abstraction that drives HTTP based Linked Data; which is also the basic payload unit that underlies <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Representational_State_Transfer" id="link-id11489a98">REST</a>.</p> <h3>Conclusion</h3> <p>I simply hope that the next decade marks a period of broad appreciation and comprehension of Data Access, Integration, and Management issues on the parts of: application developers, integrators, analysts, end-users, and decision makers. Remember, without structured Data we cannot produce or share <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id13cb5040">Information</a>, and without Information, we cannot produce of share <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Knowledge" id="link-id647abb0">Knowledge</a>.</p> <h3>Related</h3> <ul> <li> <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1567" id="link-id13fa3a20">HTTP URI Abstraction and Linked Data</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.dataflux.com/dfblog/?p=1458," id="link-id138f3ea8">First Law of Data Quality</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://walkingoncoals.blogspot.com/2009/12/whos-data-is-it-part-1.html" id="link-id13efccb8">Who's Data Is It?</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1442" id="link-id1355df68">Serendipitous Discovery Quotient</a> (SDQ)</li> <li> <a href="http://www.seangolliher.com/2009/linked-data/serendipitous-discovery-quotient-sdq-the-future-of-seo-or-an-abstract-concept/" id="link-id11217cb8">SDQ: The Future of SEO or an Abstract Concept?</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/oerling/weblog/Orri%20Erling%27s%20Blog/1587" id="link-id139cfbe0">SPARQL & GeoSpatial Indexing</a> (implications of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SPARQL" id="link-id13f51b78">SPARQL</a>-GEO)</li> <li> <a href="http://blog.jonudell.net/2009/09/09/talking-with-kingsley-idehen-about-mastering-your-own-search-index/" id="link-id13c5c248">Mastering Your Own Search Index</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://blog.jonudell.net/2009/11/23/talking-with-martin-hepp-about-solving-the-paradox-of-choice/" id="link-id135ba4d0">Solving the Paradox of Choice</a>.</li> </ul>
One Technology That Will Rock 2010 (Update 1)
2010-02-01T14:02:41Z
2010-02-01T09:02:41-05:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1531
<p>Here is a tabulated "compare and contrast" of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web">Web</a> usage patterns 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0.</p> <table border="1" width="715" height="286"> <tbody> <tr> <td> </td> <td><strong>Web 1.0</strong></td> <td><strong>Web 2.0</strong></td> <td><strong>Web 3.0</strong></td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Simple Definition</strong></td> <td>Interactive / Visual Web</td> <td>Programmable Web</td> <td><a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id117a9a98">Linked Data</a> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Giant_Global_Graph" id="link-id146bcdb0">Web</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Unit of Presence</strong></td> <td>Web Page</td> <td>Web Service Endpoint</td> <td><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Spaces" id="link-id11a66c60">Data Space</a> (named structured data enclave)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Unit of Value Exchange</strong></td> <td>Page <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Uniform_Resource_Locator" id="link-id146083f8">URL</a></td> <td>Endpoint URL for API</td> <td>Resource / <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Entity" id="link-id121b2148">Entity</a> / Object <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Uniform_Resource_Identifier" id="link-id1467ed00">URI</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Data Granularity</strong></td> <td>Low (HTML)</td> <td>Medium (XML)</td> <td>High (RDF)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Defining Services</strong></td> <td>Search </td> <td>Community (Blogs to Social Networks) </td> <td>Find</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Participation Quotient</strong></td> <td>Low</td> <td>Medium</td> <td>High</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Serendipitous Discovery Quotient </strong></td> <td>Low</td> <td>Medium</td> <td>High</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Data Referencability Quotient </strong></td> <td>Low (Documents)</td> <td>Medium (Documents)</td> <td>High (Documents and their constituent Data)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Subjectivity Quotient</strong></td> <td>High</td> <td>Medium (from A-list bloggers to select source and partner lists)</td> <td>Low (everything is discovered via URIs)</td> </tr> <tr> <td> <strong><a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Transclusion" id="link-id155308d8">Transclusence</a> </strong></td> <td>Low</td> <td>Medium (Code driven Mashups)</td> <td>HIgh (Data driven Meshups)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>What You See Is What You Prefer (WYSIWYP)</strong></td> <td>Low</td> <td>Medium </td> <td>High (negotiated representation of resource descriptions)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Open Data Access (Data Accessibility)</strong></td> <td>Low</td> <td>Medium (Silos)</td> <td>High (no Silos)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Identity Issues Handling</strong></td> <td>Low</td> <td>Medium (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/OpenID" id="link-id119d77f8">OpenID</a>)</td> <td><p>High (<a href="http://esw.w3.org/topic/foaf+ssl" id="link-id135cc348">FOAF+SSL</a>)</p></td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Solution Deployment Model</strong></td> <td>Centralized</td> <td>Centralized with sprinklings of Federation</td> <td>Federated with function specific Centralization (e.g. Lookup hubs like <a href="http://community.linkeddata.org/dataspace/organization/lod#this" id="link-id1496d1d0">LOD</a> Cloud or <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/DBpedia" id="link-id1571f690">DBpedia</a>)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Data Model Orientation</strong></td> <td>Logical (Tree based DOM)</td> <td>Logical (Tree based XML)</td> <td>Conceptual (Graph based RDF)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>User Interface Issues</strong></td> <td>Dynamically generated static interfaces</td> <td>Dyanically generated interafaces with semi-dynamic interfaces (courtesy of XSLT or <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/XQuery" id="link-id118399e8">XQuery</a>/<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/XPath" id="link-id14b00ba0">XPath</a>)</td> <td>Dynamic Interfaces (pre- and post-generation) courtesy of self-describing nature of RDF</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Data Querying</strong></td> <td><a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Full_text_search" id="link-id14fdd948">Full Text Search</a></td> <td>Full Text Search</td> <td>Full Text Search + Structured Graph Pattern Query Language (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SPARQL" id="link-id154a9368">SPARQL</a>)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>What Each Delivers</strong></td> <td>Democratized Publishing</td> <td>Democratized Journalism & Commentary (Citizen Journalists & Commentators)</td> <td>Democratized Analysis (Citizen Data Analysts)</td> </tr> <tr> <td> <strong><a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Star_Wars" id="link-id155ce920">Star Wars Edition Analogy</a> </strong></td> <td>Star Wars (original fight for decentralization via rebellion)</td> <td>Empire Strikes Back (centralization and data silos make comeback)</td> <td>Return of the JEDI (<a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1474" id="link-id11706640">FORCE</a> emerges and facilitates decentralization from "Identity" all the way to "Open Data Access" and "Negotiable Descriptive Data Representation")</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>Naturally, I am not expecting everyone to agree with <a href="http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this" id="link-id15be20c0">me</a>. I am simply making my contribution to what will remain facinating discourse for a long time to come :-)</p> <h3>Related</h3> <ul> <li> <a href="http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2007/10/web-30----the-a.html" id="link-id14a9d738">Web 3.0 The Best Official Definition Imaginable</a> -- Nova Spivack's </li> </ul>
Simple Compare & Contrast of Web 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 (Update 1)
2009-04-29T17:21:25Z
2009-04-29T13:21:25.000004-04:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1520
<p> As the world works it way through a "once in a generation" economic crisis, the long overdue downgrade of the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Relational_database_management_system" id="link-id15750540">RDBMS</a>, from its pivotal position at the apex of the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data" id="link-id0x24ea3650">data</a> access and data management pyramid is nigh.</p> <h3>What is the Data Access, and Data Management Value Pyramid?</h3> <p> As depicted below, a top-down view of the data access and data management value chain. The term: apex, simply indicates value primacy, which takes the form of a data access API based entry point into a DBMS realm -- aligned to an underlying data model. Examples of data access APIs include: Native Call Level Interfaces (CLIs), <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Open_Database_Connectivity" id="link-id11c254c0">ODBC</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Java_Database_Connectivity" id="link-id149b16a8">JDBC</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/ADO.NET" id="link-id11451eb0">ADO</a>.NET, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/OLE_DB" id="link-id15b02478">OLE-DB</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/XML_for_Analysis" id="link-id1181fa10">XMLA</a>, and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web" id="link-id0x1f8394a8">Web</a> Services.</p> See: <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/images/Agility_Value_Factors_Pyramid.png" id="link-id146cadd8"> AVF Pyramid Diagram.</a> <p> The degree to which ad-hoc views of data managed by a DBMS can be produced and dispatched to relevant data consumers (e.g. people), without compromising concurrency, data durability, and security, collectively determine the "Agility Value Factor" (AVF) of a given DBMS. Remember, agility as the cornerstone of environmental adaptation is as old as the concept of evolution, and intrinsic to all pursuits of primacy. </p> <p>In simpler business oriented terms, look at AVF as the degree to which DBMS technology affects the ability to effectively implement "Market Leadership Discipline" along the following pathways: innovation, operation excellence, or customer intimacy. </p> <h3>Why has RDBMS Primacy has Endured?</h3> <p> Historically, at least since the late '80s, the RDBMS genre of DBMS has consistently offered the highest AVF relative to other DBMS genres en route to primacy within the value pyramid. The desire to improve on paper reports and spreadsheets is basically what DBMS technology has fundamentally addressed to date, even though conceptual level interaction with data has never been its forte.</p> See: <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/images/Old_RDBMS_Primacy_Pyramid.png" id="link-id134dab90"> RDBMS Primacy Diagram.</a> <p> For more then 10 years -- at the very least -- limitations of the traditional RDBMS in the realm of conceptual level interaction with data across diverse data sources and schemas (enterprise, Web, and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Internet" id="link-id116001c0">Internet</a>) has been crystal clear to many RDBMS technology practitioners, as indicated by some of the quotes excerpted below:</p> <blockquote> <cite> <p> "Future of Database Research is excellent, but what is the future of data?" </p> "..it is hard for <a href="http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this" id="link-id14932398">me</a> to disagree with the conclusions in this report. It captures exactly the right thoughts, and should be a must read for everyone involved in the area of databases and database research in particular." <p>-- <a href="http://jhingran.typepad.com/anant_jhingrans_musings/" id="link-id11334c50">Dr. Anant Jingran</a>, CTO, IBM <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id150c7970">Information</a> Management Systems, commenting on the <a href="http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/claremont/" id="link-id11c3b408">2007 RDBMS technology retreat</a> attended by a number of key DBMS technology pioneers and researchers.</p> </cite> </blockquote> <blockquote> <cite> <p> "<a href="http://www.databasecolumn.com/2007/09/one-size-fits-all.html" id="link-id15c14f08">One size fits all: A concept whose time has come and gone</a> </p> <p> </p> <ol> <li> They are direct descendants of System R and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Ingres" id="link-id146da780">Ingres</a> and were architected more than 25 years ago</li> <li> They are advocating "one size fits all"; i.e. a single engine that solves all DBMS needs. </li> </ol> <p>-- Prof. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Stonebraker" id="link-id145c4e28">Michael Stonebreaker</a>, one of the founding fathers of the RDBMS industry.</p> </cite> </blockquote> <p>Until this point in time, the requisite confluence of "circumstantial pain" and "open standards" based technology required to enable an objective "compare and contrast" of RDBMS engine virtues and viable alternatives hasn't occurred. Thus, the RDBMS has endured it position of primacy albeit on a "one size fits all basis". </p> <h4>Circumstantial Pain</h4> <p> As mentioned earlier, we are in the midst of an economic crisis that is ultimately about a consistent inability to connect dots across a substrate of interlinked data sources that transcend traditional data access boundaries with high doses of schematic heterogeneity. Ironically, in a era of the dot-com, we haven't been able to make meaningful connections between relevant "real-world things" that extend beyond primitive data hosted database tables and content management style document containers; we've struggled to achieve this in the most basic sense, let alone evolve our ability to connect inline with the <a href="http://www.vldb2007.org/program/slides/s1161-brodie.pdf" id="link-id11a0dcf0">exponential rate at which the Internet & Web are spawning "universes of discourse" (data spaces) that emanate from user activity</a> (within the enterprise and across the Internet & Web). In a nutshell, we haven't been able to upgrade our interaction with data such that "conceptual models" and resulting "<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Context_%28language_use%29" id="link-id12da4b00">context</a> lenses" (or facets) become concrete; by this I mean: real-world <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Entity" id="link-id146a48a8">entity</a> interaction making its way into the computer realm as opposed to the impedance we all suffer today when we transition from conceptual model interaction (real-world) to logical model interaction (when dealing with RDBMS based data access and data management). </p> <p>Here are some simple examples of what I can only best describe as: "critical dots unconnected", resulting from an inability to interact with data conceptually:</p> <strong>Government (Globally) -</strong> <p> Financial regulatory bodies couldn't effectively discern that a <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Credit_default_swap" id="link-id115ba0e0">Credit Default Swap</a> is an Insurance policy in all but literal name. And in not doing so the cost of an unregulated <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Insurance" id="link-id158d4960">insurance policy</a> laid the foundation for exacerbating the toxicity of fatally flawed mortgage backed securities. Put simply: a flawed insurance policy was the fallback on a toxic security that financiers found exotic based on superficial packaging.</p> <strong>Enterprises - </strong> <p> Banks still don't understand that capital really does exists in tangible and intangible forms; with the intangible being the variant that is inherently dynamic. For example, a tech companies intellectual capital far exceeds the value of fixture, fittings, and buildings, but you be amazed to find that in most cases this vital asset has not significant value when banks get down to the nitty gritty of debt collateral; instead, a buffer of flawed securitization has occurred atop a borderline static asset class covering the aforementioned buildings, fixtures, and fittings. </p> <p> In the general enterprise arena, IT executives continued to "rip and replace" existing technology without ever effectively addressing the timeless inability to connect data across disparate data silos generated by internal enterprise applications, let alone the broader need to mesh data from the inside with external data sources. No correlations made between the growth of buzzwords and the compounding nature of data integration challenges. It's 2009 and only a miniscule number of executives dare fantasize about being anywhere within distance of the: relevant information at your fingertips vision. </p> <p> Looking more holistically at data interaction in general, whether you interact with data in the enterprise space (i.e., at work) or on the Internet or Web, you ultimately are delving into a mishmash of disparate computer systems, applications, service (Web or SOA), and databases (of the RDBMS variety in a majority of cases) associated with a plethora of disparate schemas. Yes, but even today "rip and replace" is still the norm pushed by most vendors; pitting one mono culture against another as exemplified by irrelevances such as: FOSS/LAMP vs Commercial or Web vs. Enterprise, when none of this matters if the data access and integration issues are recognized let alone addressed (see: <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1497?sid=0df0294caee8b37925c6a888bbbca136&realm=wa" id="link-id15c27300">Applications are Like Fish and Data Like Wine</a>). </p> <p> Like the current credit-crunch, exponential growth of data originating from disparate application databases and associated schemas, within shrinking processing time frames, has triggered a rethinking of what defines data access and data management value today en route to an inevitable RDBMS downgrade within the value pyramid.</p> <h3>Technology</h3> <p>There have been many attempts to address real-world modeling requirements across the broader DBMS community from Object Databases to Object-Relational Databases, and more recently the emergence of simple <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Entity-attribute-value_model" id="link-id1128dad0">Entity</a>-Attribute-Value model DBMS engines. In all cases failure has come down to the existence of one or more of the following deficiencies, across each potential alternative:</p> <ol> <li>Query language standardization - nothing close to <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SQL" id="link-id16002d60">SQL</a> standardization</li> <li>Data Access API standardization - nothing close to ODBC, JDBC, OLE-DB, or ADO.NET</li> <li>Wire protocol standardization - nothing close to HTTP</li> <li>Distributed Identity infrastructure - nothing close to the non-repudiatable digital Identity that <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Friend_of_a_friend" id="link-id14926b18">foaf</a>+ssl accords</li> <li>Use of Identifiers as network based pointers to data sources - nothing close to RDF based <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id16180a28">Linked Data</a> </li> <li>Negotiable data representation - nothing close to Mime and HTTP based Content Negotiation</li> <li>Scalability especially in the era of Internet & Web scale.</li> </ol> <h4>Entity-Attribute-Value with Classes & Relationships (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Entity-attribute-value_model" id="link-id13e741b8">EAV</a>/CR) data models</h4> <p>A common characteristic shared by all post-relational DBMS management systems (from Object Relational to pure Object) is an orientation towards variations of EAV/CR based data models. Unfortunately, all efforts in the EAV/CR realm have typically suffered from at least one of the deficiencies listed above. In addition, the same "one DBMS model fits all" approach that lies at the heart of the RDBMS downgrade also exists in the EAV/CR realm.</p> <h3>What Comes Next?</h3> <p>The RDBMS is not going away (ever), but its era of primacy -- by virtue of its placement at the apex of the data access and data management value pyramid -- is over! I make this bold claim for the following reasons: </p> <ol> <li> The Internet aided "Global Village" has brought "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_World_Assumption" id="link-id1148e560">Open World</a>" vs "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_World_Assumption" id="link-id11967cd0">Closed World</a>" assumption issues to the fore e.g., the current global economic crisis remains centered on the inability to connect dots across "Open World" and "Closed World" data frontiers </li> <li> Entity-Attribute-Value with Classes & Relationships (EAV/CR) based DBMS models are more effective when dealing with disparate data associated with disparate schemas, across disparate DBMS engines, host operating systems, and networks. </li> </ol> <p>Based on the above, it is crystal clear that a different kind of DBMS -- one with higher AVF relative to the RDBMS -- needs to sit atop today's data access and data management value pyramid. The characteristics of this DBMS must include the following:</p> <ol> <li> Every item of data (Datum/Entity/Object/Resource) has Identity</li> <li> Identity is achieved via Identifiers that aren't locked at the DBMS, OS, Network, or Application levels</li> <li> Object Identifiers and Object values are independent (extricably linked by association)</li> <li> Object values should be de-referencable via Object Identifier</li> <li> Representation of de-referenced value graph (entity, attributes, and values mesh) must be negotiable (i.e. content negotiation)</li> <li>Structured query language must provide mechanism for Creation, Deletion, Updates, and Querying of data objects</li> <li> Performance & Scalability across "Closed World" (enterprise) and "Open World" (Internet & Web) realms.</li> </ol> <p>Quick recap, I am not saying that RDBMS engine technology is dead or obsolete. I am simply stating that the era of RDBMS primacy within the data access and data management value pyramid is over. </p> <p>The problem domain (conceptual model views over heterogeneous data sources) at the apex of the aforementioned pyramid has simply evolved beyond the natural capabilities of the RDBMS which is rooted in "Closed World" assumptions re., data definition, access, and management. The need to maintain domain based conceptual interaction with data is now palpable at every echelon within our "Global Village" - Internet, Web, Enterprise, Government etc.</p> <p>It is my personal view that an EAV/CR model based DBMS, with support for the seven items enumerated above, can trigger the long anticipated RDBMS downgrade. Such a DBMS would be inherently multi-model because you would need to the best of RDBMS and EAV/CR model engines in a single product, with in-built support for HTTP and other Internet protocols in order to effectively address data representation and serialization issues.</p> <h4>EAV/CR Oriented Data Access & Management Technology</h4> <p>Examples of contemporary EAV/CR frameworks that provide concrete conceptual layers for data access and data management currently include:</p> <ul> <li> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Resource_Description_Framework" id="link-id115d1cb0"> Resource Description Framework</a> (RDF) - an EAV/CR based framework</li> <li> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id116cf810">RDF Linked Data </a>- EAV/CR based framework that mandates de-referencable HTTP based Identifiers</li> <li> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/ADO.NET_Entity_Framework" id="link-id13daa160">ADO.NET Entity Frameworks</a> - Microsoft .NET based EAV/CR framework</li> <li> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/page/Core_Data" id="link-id11111838">Core Data Services </a>- Mac OS X based EAV/CR framework that evolved from NeXT's <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Enterprise_Objects_Framework" id="link-id15c27df0">Enterprise Object Frameworks</a> (EOF).</li> </ul> <p>The frameworks above provide the basis for a revised AVF pyramid, as depicted below, that reflects today's data access and management realities i.e., an Internet & Web driven global village comprised of interlinked distributed data objects, compatible with "Open World" assumptions.</p> See: <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/images/New_EAV_RDBMS_Pyramid.png" id="link-id158e0760">New EAV/CR Primacy Diagram.</a> <h3>Related</h3> <ul> <li> <a href="http://dynamicorange.com/2009/01/22/blueblog-how-and-why-glue-is-using-amazon-simpledb-instead-of-a-relational-database/" id="link-id15e07c10">How & Why Glue is Using Amazon SimpleDB</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/clamen/OODBMS/Manifesto/htManifesto/node4.html#SECTION00022000000000000000" id="link-id116cf450">Object Database Manifesto (Identity excerpt)</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.unixspace.com/context/databases.html" id="link-id150b2c20">Database Models Overview</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEj9vqVvHPc&feature=related" id="link-id0x1135d978">Ted Nelson Explaining Irregularity and Idiosyncrasy of Data Structures</a> - ZigZag Demo </li> </ul>
Time for RDBMS Primacy Downgrade is Nigh! (No Embedded Images Edition - Update 1)
2009-03-17T15:50:58Z
2009-03-17T11:50:58-04:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1519
<p> As the world works it way through a "once in a generation" economic crisis, the long overdue downgrade of the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Relational_database_management_system" id="link-id15750540">RDBMS</a>, from its pivotal position at the apex of the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data" id="link-id0x66a74b8">data</a> access and data management pyramid is nigh.</p> <h3>What is the Data Access, and Data Management Value Pyramid?</h3> <p> As depicted below, a top-down view of the data access and data management value chain. The term: apex, simply indicates value primacy, which takes the form of a data access API based entry point into a DBMS realm -- aligned to an underlying data model. Examples of data access APIs include: Native Call Level Interfaces (CLIs), <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Open_Database_Connectivity" id="link-id11c254c0">ODBC</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Java_Database_Connectivity" id="link-id149b16a8">JDBC</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/ADO.NET" id="link-id11451eb0">ADO</a>.NET, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/OLE_DB" id="link-id15b02478">OLE-DB</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/XML_for_Analysis" id="link-id1181fa10">XMLA</a>, and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web" id="link-id0x2fef498">Web</a> Services.</p> <div> <img alt="Image" src="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/images/Agility_Value_Factors_Pyramid.png" /> </div> <p> The degree to which ad-hoc views of data managed by a DBMS can be produced and dispatched to relevant data consumers (e.g. people), without compromising concurrency, data durability, and security, collectively determine the "Agility Value Factor" (AVF) of a given DBMS. Remember, agility as the cornerstone of environmental adaptation is as old as the concept of evolution, and intrinsic to all pursuits of primacy. </p> <p>In simpler business oriented terms, look at AVF as the degree to which DBMS technology affects the ability to effectively implement "Market Leadership Discipline" along the following pathways: innovation, operation excellence, or customer intimacy. </p> <h3>Why has RDBMS Primacy has Endured?</h3> <p> Historically, at least since the late '80s, the RDBMS genre of DBMS has consistently offered the highest AVF relative to other DBMS genres en route to primacy within the value pyramid. The desire to improve on paper reports and spreadsheets is basically what DBMS technology has fundamentally addressed to date, even though conceptual level interaction with data has never been its forte.</p> <div> <img alt="Image" src="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/images/Old_RDBMS_Primacy_Pyramid.png" /> </div> <p> For more then 10 years -- at the very least -- limitations of the traditional RDBMS in the realm of conceptual level interaction with data across diverse data sources and schemas (enterprise, Web, and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Internet" id="link-id116001c0">Internet</a>) has been crystal clear to many RDBMS technology practitioners, as indicated by some of the quotes excerpted below:</p> <blockquote> <cite> <p> "Future of Database Research is excellent, but what is the future of data?" </p> "..it is hard for <a href="http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this" id="link-id14932398">me</a> to disagree with the conclusions in this report. It captures exactly the right thoughts, and should be a must read for everyone involved in the area of databases and database research in particular." <p>-- <a href="http://jhingran.typepad.com/anant_jhingrans_musings/" id="link-id11334c50">Dr. Anant Jingran</a>, CTO, IBM <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id150c7970">Information</a> Management Systems, commenting on the <a href="http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/claremont/" id="link-id11c3b408">2007 RDBMS technology retreat</a> attended by a number of key DBMS technology pioneers and researchers.</p> </cite> </blockquote> <blockquote> <cite> <p> "<a href="http://www.databasecolumn.com/2007/09/one-size-fits-all.html" id="link-id15c14f08">One size fits all: A concept whose time has come and gone</a> </p> <p> </p> <ol> <li> They are direct descendants of System R and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Ingres" id="link-id146da780">Ingres</a> and were architected more than 25 years ago</li> <li> They are advocating "one size fits all"; i.e. a single engine that solves all DBMS needs. </li> </ol> <p>-- Prof. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Stonebraker" id="link-id145c4e28">Michael Stonebreaker</a>, one of the founding fathers of the RDBMS industry.</p> </cite> </blockquote> <p>Until this point in time, the requisite confluence of "circumstantial pain" and "open standards" based technology required to enable an objective "compare and contrast" of RDBMS engine virtues and viable alternatives hasn't occurred. Thus, the RDBMS has endured it position of primacy albeit on a "one size fits all basis". </p> <h4>Circumstantial Pain</h4> <p> As mentioned earlier, we are in the midst of an economic crisis that is ultimately about a consistent inability to connect dots across a substrate of interlinked data sources that transcend traditional data access boundaries with high doses of schematic heterogeneity. Ironically, in a era of the dot-com, we haven't been able to make meaningful connections between relevant "real-world things" that extend beyond primitive data hosted database tables and content management style document containers; we've struggled to achieve this in the most basic sense, let alone evolve our ability to connect inline with the <a href="http://www.vldb2007.org/program/slides/s1161-brodie.pdf" id="link-id11a0dcf0">exponential rate at which the Internet & Web are spawning "universes of discourse" (data spaces) that emanate from user activity</a> (within the enterprise and across the Internet & Web). In a nutshell, we haven't been able to upgrade our interaction with data such that "conceptual models" and resulting "<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Context_%28language_use%29" id="link-id12da4b00">context</a> lenses" (or facets) become concrete; by this I mean: real-world <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Entity" id="link-id146a48a8">entity</a> interaction making its way into the computer realm as opposed to the impedance we all suffer today when we transition from conceptual model interaction (real-world) to logical model interaction (when dealing with RDBMS based data access and data management). </p> <p>Here are some simple examples of what I can only best describe as: "critical dots unconnected", resulting from an inability to interact with data conceptually:</p> <strong>Government (Globally) -</strong> <p> Financial regulatory bodies couldn't effectively discern that a <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Credit_default_swap" id="link-id115ba0e0">Credit Default Swap</a> is an Insurance policy in all but literal name. And in not doing so the cost of an unregulated <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Insurance" id="link-id158d4960">insurance policy</a> laid the foundation for exacerbating the toxicity of fatally flawed mortgage backed securities. Put simply: a flawed insurance policy was the fallback on a toxic security that financiers found exotic based on superficial packaging.</p> <strong>Enterprises - </strong> <p> Banks still don't understand that capital really does exists in tangible and intangible forms; with the intangible being the variant that is inherently dynamic. For example, a tech companies intellectual capital far exceeds the value of fixture, fittings, and buildings, but you be amazed to find that in most cases this vital asset has not significant value when banks get down to the nitty gritty of debt collateral; instead, a buffer of flawed securitization has occurred atop a borderline static asset class covering the aforementioned buildings, fixtures, and fittings. </p> <p> In the general enterprise arena, IT executives continued to "rip and replace" existing technology without ever effectively addressing the timeless inability to connect data across disparate data silos generated by internal enterprise applications, let alone the broader need to mesh data from the inside with external data sources. No correlations made between the growth of buzzwords and the compounding nature of data integration challenges. It's 2009 and only a miniscule number of executives dare fantasize about being anywhere within distance of the: relevant information at your fingertips vision. </p> <p> Looking more holistically at data interaction in general, whether you interact with data in the enterprise space (i.e., at work) or on the Internet or Web, you ultimately are delving into a mishmash of disparate computer systems, applications, service (Web or SOA), and databases (of the RDBMS variety in a majority of cases) associated with a plethora of disparate schemas. Yes, but even today "rip and replace" is still the norm pushed by most vendors; pitting one mono culture against another as exemplified by irrelevances such as: FOSS/LAMP vs Commercial or Web vs. Enterprise, when none of this matters if the data access and integration issues are recognized let alone addressed (see: <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1497?sid=0df0294caee8b37925c6a888bbbca136&realm=wa" id="link-id15c27300">Applications are Like Fish and Data Like Wine</a>). </p> <p> Like the current credit-crunch, exponential growth of data originating from disparate application databases and associated schemas, within shrinking processing time frames, has triggered a rethinking of what defines data access and data management value today en route to an inevitable RDBMS downgrade within the value pyramid.</p> <h3>Technology</h3> <p>There have been many attempts to address real-world modeling requirements across the broader DBMS community from Object Databases to Object-Relational Databases, and more recently the emergence of simple <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Entity-attribute-value_model" id="link-id1128dad0">Entity</a>-Attribute-Value model DBMS engines. In all cases failure has come down to the existence of one or more of the following deficiencies, across each potential alternative:</p> <ol> <li>Query language standardization - nothing close to <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SQL" id="link-id16002d60">SQL</a> standardization</li> <li>Data Access API standardization - nothing close to ODBC, JDBC, OLE-DB, or ADO.NET</li> <li>Wire protocol standardization - nothing close to HTTP</li> <li>Distributed Identity infrastructure - nothing close to the non-repudiatable digital Identity that <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Friend_of_a_friend" id="link-id14926b18">foaf</a>+ssl accords</li> <li>Use of Identifiers as network based pointers to data sources - nothing close to RDF based <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id16180a28">Linked Data</a> </li> <li>Negotiable data representation - nothing close to Mime and HTTP based Content Negotiation</li> <li>Scalability especially in the era of Internet & Web scale.</li> </ol> <h4>Entity-Attribute-Value with Classes & Relationships (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Entity-attribute-value_model" id="link-id13e741b8">EAV</a>/CR) data models</h4> <p>A common characteristic shared by all post-relational DBMS management systems (from Object Relational to pure Object) is an orientation towards variations of EAV/CR based data models. Unfortunately, all efforts in the EAV/CR realm have typically suffered from at least one of the deficiencies listed above. In addition, the same "one DBMS model fits all" approach that lies at the heart of the RDBMS downgrade also exists in the EAV/CR realm.</p> <h3>What Comes Next?</h3> <p>The RDBMS is not going away (ever), but its era of primacy -- by virtue of its placement at the apex of the data access and data management value pyramid -- is over! I make this bold claim for the following reasons: </p> <ol> <li> The Internet aided "Global Village" has brought "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_World_Assumption" id="link-id1148e560">Open World</a>" vs "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_World_Assumption" id="link-id11967cd0">Closed World</a>" assumption issues to the fore e.g., the current global economic crisis remains centered on the inability to connect dots across "Open World" and "Closed World" data frontiers </li> <li> Entity-Attribute-Value with Classes & Relationships (EAV/CR) based DBMS models are more effective when dealing with disparate data associated with disparate schemas, across disparate DBMS engines, host operating systems, and networks. </li> </ol> <p>Based on the above, it is crystal clear that a different kind of DBMS -- one with higher AVF relative to the RDBMS -- needs to sit atop today's data access and data management value pyramid. The characteristics of this DBMS must include the following:</p> <ol> <li> Every item of data (Datum/Entity/Object/Resource) has Identity</li> <li> Identity is achieved via Identifiers that aren't locked at the DBMS, OS, Network, or Application levels</li> <li> Object Identifiers and Object values are independent (extricably linked by association)</li> <li> Object values should be de-referencable via Object Identifier</li> <li> Representation of de-referenced value graph (entity, attributes, and values mesh) must be negotiable (i.e. content negotiation)</li> <li>Structured query language must provide mechanism for Creation, Deletion, Updates, and Querying of data objects</li> <li> Performance & Scalability across "Closed World" (enterprise) and "Open World" (Internet & Web) realms.</li> </ol> <p>Quick recap, I am not saying that RDBMS engine technology is dead or obsolete. I am simply stating that the era of RDBMS primacy within the data access and data management value pyramid is over. </p> <p>The problem domain (conceptual model views over heterogeneous data sources) at the apex of the aforementioned pyramid has simply evolved beyond the natural capabilities of the RDBMS which is rooted in "Closed World" assumptions re., data definition, access, and management. The need to maintain domain based conceptual interaction with data is now palpable at every echelon within our "Global Village" - Internet, Web, Enterprise, Government etc.</p> <p>It is my personal view that an EAV/CR model based DBMS, with support for the seven items enumerated above, can trigger the long anticipated RDBMS downgrade. Such a DBMS would be inherently multi-model because you would need to the best of RDBMS and EAV/CR model engines in a single product, with in-built support for HTTP and other Internet protocols in order to effectively address data representation and serialization issues.</p> <h4>EAV/CR Oriented Data Access & Management Technology</h4> <p>Examples of contemporary EAV/CR frameworks that provide concrete conceptual layers for data access and data management currently include:</p> <ul> <li> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Resource_Description_Framework" id="link-id115d1cb0"> Resource Description Framework</a> (RDF) - an EAV/CR based framework</li> <li> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id116cf810">RDF Linked Data </a>- EAV/CR based framework that mandates de-referencable HTTP based Identifiers</li> <li> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/ADO.NET_Entity_Framework" id="link-id13daa160">ADO.NET Entity Frameworks</a> - Microsoft .NET based EAV/CR framework</li> <li> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/page/Core_Data" id="link-id11111838">Core Data Services </a>- Mac OS X based EAV/CR framework that evolved from NeXT's <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Enterprise_Objects_Framework" id="link-id15c27df0">Enterprise Object Frameworks</a> (EOF).</li> </ul> <p>The frameworks above provide the basis for a revised AVF pyramid, as depicted below, that reflects today's data access and management realities i.e., an Internet & Web driven global village comprised of interlinked distributed data objects, compatible with "Open World" assumptions.</p> <div> <image src="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/images/New_EAV_RDBMS_Pyramid.png"></image> </div> <h3>Related</h3> <ul> <li> <a href="http://allanslibrary.blogspot.com/2009/06/semantic-way.html" id="link-id0xb8c5e498">The Semantic Way</a> - Alan Cho's Summary of <a href="http://www.pwc.com/extweb/home.nsf/docid/1308AF8EA7929CCA852575BA00720F26" id="link-id0xb80f5e10">PwC 2009 tech forecast report on the Semantic Web</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/is_the_relational_database_doomed.php" id="link-id0xb8c20658">Is the RDBMS Doomed</a> - <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com">ReadWriteWeb</a> Article</li> <li> <a href="http://www.metabrew.com/article/anti-rdbms-a-list-of-distributed-key-value-stores/" id="link-id0x1ab4778">Anti-RDBMS: a list of Distributed Key-Value Stores</a> - by <a href="http://www.last.fm/user/RJ" id="link-id0x5a968060">Richard Jones</a> (CTO Last.FM)</li> <li> <a href="http://dynamicorange.com/2009/01/22/blueblog-how-and-why-glue-is-using-amazon-simpledb-instead-of-a-relational-database/" id="link-id15e07c10">How & Why Glue is Using Amazon SimpleDB</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/clamen/OODBMS/Manifesto/htManifesto/node4.html#SECTION00022000000000000000" id="link-id116cf450">Object Database Manifesto (Identity excerpt)</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.unixspace.com/context/databases.html" id="link-id150b2c20">Database Models Overview</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEj9vqVvHPc&feature=related" id="link-id0x66b0850">Ted Nelson Explaining Irregularity and Idiosyncrasy of Data Structures</a> - ZigZag Demo </li> </ul>
The Time for RDBMS Primacy Downgrade is Nigh!
2009-06-03T22:09:58Z
2009-06-03T18:09:58.000001-04:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1415
<p> <a href="http://www.jasonkolb.com/" id="link-id13ba6d90">Jason Kolb</a> (who <a href="http://www.jasonkolb.com/weblog/2008/08/the-future-of-t.html" id="link-id1524e210">initially</a> nudged me to chime in), and then <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/future_of_the_desktop.php" id="link-id13a182c0">ReadWriteWeb</a>, and of course <a href="http://www.twine.com/item/11bshgkbr-1k5/the-future-of-the-desktop" id="link-id13f1e1f0">Nova's Twine about the topic</a>, have collectively started an interesting discussion about <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web">Web</a>.vNext (3.0 and beyond) under the heading: The Future of the Desktop.</p> <p>My contribution to the developing discourse takes the form of a Q&A session. I've taken the questions posed and provided answers that express my particular points of view: </p> <blockquote> <cite>Q: Is the desktop of the future going to just be a web-hosted version of the same old-fashioned desktop metaphors we have today?</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>A: No, it's going to be a more <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/" id="link-id1524d4a0">Web Architecture</a> aware and compliant variant exposed by appropriate metaphors.</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Q: The desktop of the future is going to be a hosted web service</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>A: A vessel for exploiting the virtues of the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id10827ad0">Linked Data</a> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Giant_Global_Graph" id="link-id155bc698">Web</a>.</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Q: The Browser is Going to Swallow Up the Desktop</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>A: Literally, of course not! Metaphorically, of course! And then the Browser metaphor will decomposes into function specific bits of Web interaction amenable to orchestration by its users.</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Q: The focus of the desktop will shift from <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id1667e2e0">information</a> to attention</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>A: No! <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Knowledge" id="link-id104bb9c8">Knowledge</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id1524dd48">Information</a>, and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data">Data</a> sharing courtesy of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id10723640">Hyperdata</a> & Hypertext Linking.</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Q: Users are going to shift from acting as librarians to acting as daytraders</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>A: They were Librarians at Web 1.0, Journalist at Web 2.0, and Analysts in Web 3.0 (i.e, analyze structured and interlinked data), and CEOs in Web 4.0 (i.e. get Agents to do stuff intelligently en route to making decisions).</blockquote> <blockquote> <br /> <cite>Q: The Webtop will be more social and will leverage and integrate collective intelligence</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>A: The <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id13a01ed0">Linked Data</a> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Giant_Global_Graph" id="link-id106343a8">Web</a> vessel will only require you to fill in your profile (once) and then serendipitous discovery and meshing of relevant data will simply happen (the serendipity quotient will grow in line with <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id10560050">Linked Data</a> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Giant_Global_Graph" id="link-id100f4940">Web</a> density).</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Q: The desktop of the future is going to have powerful semantic search and social search capabilities built-in</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>A: It is going to be able to "Find" rather than "Search" for stuff courtesy of the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id10a18a70">Linked Data</a> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Giant_Global_Graph" id="link-id10a976f0">Web</a>.</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite> Q: Interactive shared spaces will replace folders</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>A: Data Spaces and their URIs (Data Source Names) replace everything. You simply choose the exploration metaphor that best suits you space interaction needs.</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Q: The Portable Desktop</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>A: Ubiquitous Desktop i.e. do the same thing (all answers above) on any device connected to the Web.</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Q: The Smart Desktop</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>A: Vessels with access to Smart Data (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id1666e4e8">Linked Data</a> + Action driven <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Context_%28language_use%29" id="link-id171d1ff0">Context</a> sprinklings).</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Q: Federated, open policies and permissions</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>A: More federation for sure, XMPP will become a lot more important, and OAuth will enable resurgence of the federated aspects of the Web and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Internet" id="link-id100a66a8">Internet</a>.</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Q: The personal cloud</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>A: <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/OpenLink_Data_Spaces" id="link-id104ba580">Personal Data Spaces</a> plugged into Clouds (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Intranet" id="link-id15bbb970">Intranet</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Extranet" id="link-id1026d6b0">Extranet</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Internet" id="link-id140508c8">Internet</a>).</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Q: The WebOS</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>A: An operating system endowed with traditional Database and Host Operating system functionality such as: RDF Data Model, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SPARQL" id="link-idd86f48">SPARQL</a> Query Language, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Uniform_Resource_Identifier" id="link-id13f47268">URI</a> based <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointer" id="link-id1055bc78">Pointer mechanism</a>, and HTTP based message Bus.</blockquote> <br /> <blockquote> <cite>Q: Who is most likely to own the future desktop?</cite> </blockquote> <blockquote>A: You! And all you need is a <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Uniform_Resource_Identifier" id="link-id106b79e8">URI</a> (an ID or Data Source Name for "<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Entity" id="link-id133c88a0">Entity</a> You") and a Profile Page (a place where "<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Entity" id="link-id15fa8060">Entity</a> You" is Describe by You).</blockquote> <h3>One Last Thing</h3> <p>You can get a feel for the future desktop by <a href="http://ode.openlinksw.com/#Download" id="link-id165ec048">downloading</a> and then installing the <a href="http://ode.openlinksw.com/" id="link-id13baba38">OpenLink Data Explorer</a> plugin for Firefox, which allows you to switch viewing modes between Web Page and <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id13f12410">Linked Data</a> behind the page. :-)</p> <h3>Related</h3> <ul> <li> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenLink_Data_Spaces" id="link-id12496e48">OpenLink Data Spaces</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/dataspace/dav/wiki/Main/GetAPersonalURIIn5MinutesOrLess" id="link-id1027f060">Get Yourself a URI in 5 Minutes or Less</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/presentations/DataPortability_and_DataSpaces/DataPortability_and_DataSpaces.html" id="link-id10890f70">Linked Data Spaces & Data Portability</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/presentations/Creating_Deploying_Exploiting_Linked_Data2/Creating_Deploying_Exploiting_Linked_Data2_TimBL_v3.html" id="link-id137efdf8">Linked Data Conference Keynote</a> (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/RDFa" id="link-id1239d300">RDFa</a> based remix edition that includes vital bits from <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card#i" id="link-id1317a048">TimBL</a>'s <a href="http://www.linkeddataplanet.com/" id="link-id165f57c8">Linked Data Planet presentation</a>).</li> </ul>
The Future of the Desktop
2008-08-21T19:59:25Z
2008-08-21T15:59:25.000001-04:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1373
<p>I just stumbled across a post titled: <a href="http://clarkparsia.com/weblog/2008/06/06/why-reasoning-matters-consistency-checking/" id="link-id11003f00">Why Reasoning Matters: Consistency Checking</a> from <a href="http://clarkparsia.com/about" id="link-id137e8bc0">Clark and Parsia</a> </p> <p>As you can see from my recent post about how we've started the process of <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1372" id="link-id100b7d20">inoculating DBpedia against the potential dangers of "contextual incoherence"</a>, we are entering a newer era in the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id106c35e0">Semantic Web</a>'s evolution. My post and the one from Clark & Parsia both touch different aspects of the "<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data">Data</a> Dictionary" for the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id0x9d80080">Semantic Web</a> issue.</p> <p>Note: in my universe of discourse, a Data Dictionary manifests when the constraints and class hierarchies defined in an ontology (e.g. a <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web">web</a> accessible shared ontology) are functionally bound to a data manager. Interestingly the binding can take the following forms:</p> <ul> <li>Engine Hosted - which is what you get with <a href="http://docs.openlinksw.com:80/virtuoso/rdfsparqlrule.html#rdfsparqlruleintro" id="link-id105c4408">Virtuoso's in-built Inference Engine</a> </li> <li>External - which is what you get when the Inference Engine is a distinct component from the data manager (example: <a href="http://pellet.owldl.org/owlgres" id="link-id13fa37f8">Owlgres</a> which can sit in front of 3rd party <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SPARQL" id="link-id107127e8">SPARQL</a> endpoints via ARQ)</li> </ul> <p>The classification terminology I use above is very much off-the-cuff, its sole purpose is architectural distinction.</p> <p>Anyway, it's really nice to see that we are entering an era re. the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web">Semantic Web</a> vision, where the virtues of reasoning are getting simpler to demonstrate and articulate.</p> <p>In a nutshell, the point-point data integration era is coming to an end! The era of intelligent ontology based enterprise data integration is nigh!</p> <p>Of course, there is much more to come on the practical utility front, so stay tuned as we work our way through the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/DBpedia" id="link-id10424078">DBpedia</a> inoculation program.</p>
Reasoning Matters Contd
2008-06-06T18:38:54Z
2008-06-06T14:38:54-04:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1363
<p>Unfortunately, I could only spend 4 days at the recent <a href="http://www2008.org/" id="link-id196acf60">WWW2008</a> event in <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Beijing" id="link-id1974fe28">Beijing</a> (I departed the morning following the <a href="http://events.linkeddata.org/ldow2008/" id="link-id1863f858">Linked Data Workshop</a>), so I couldn't take my slot on the "Commercializing the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id18990f90">Semantic Web</a> panel" etc.. Anyway, thanks to the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web" id="link-id0x18f29310">Web</a> I can still inject my points of view in the broad <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web">Web</a> based discourse. Well so I hoped, when I attempted to post a comment to Paul Miller's ZDNet domain hosted <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Blog" id="link-id180d6750">blog</a> thread titled: <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/semantic-web/?p=132" id="link-id12d206c0">Commercialising the Semantic Web</a>.</p> <p>Unfortunately, the cost of completing ZDNet's unwieldy signup process simply exceeded the benefits of dropping my comments in their particular space :-( Thus, I'll settle for a trackback ping instead.</p> <p>What follows is the cut and paste of my intended comment contributions to Paul's post.</p> <p>Paul,</p> <p> As discussed earlier this week during <a href="http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/2008/05/kingsley-idehen-talks-about-openlink-software-linked-data-and-the-semantic-web.php" id="link-id1332fb48">our podcast session</a>, commercialization of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id17382338">Semantic Web</a> technology shouldn't be a mercurial matter at this stage in the game :-) It's all about looking at how it provides value :-)</p> <p>From the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id10d4f4a8">Linked Data</a> angle, the ability to produce, dispatch, and exploit "<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Context_%28language_use%29" id="link-id13bed160">Context</a>" across an array of "Perspectives" from a plethora of disparate <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data" id="link-id1731e5f0">data</a> sources on the Web and/or behind corporate firewalls, offers immense commercial value.</p> <p> <a href="http://developer.yahoo.com/searchmonkey/" id="link-id1975d248">Yahoo's Searchmonkey</a> effort will certainly bring clarity to some of the points I made during the podcast re. the role of URIs as "value consumption tickets" (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data" id="link-id173eb7b0">Data</a> Services are exposed via URIs). There has to be a trigger (in user space) that compels Web users to seek broader, or simply varied, perspectives as a response to <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data" id="link-id0x1c7e7f60">data</a> encountered on the Web. Yahoo! is about to put this light on in a big way (imho).</p> <p>The "self annotating" nature of the Web is what ultimately drives the manifestation of the long awaited <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Semantic_Web" id="link-id0xa18a83e8">Semantic Web</a>. I believe I postulated about <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/weblog/public/search.vspx?blogid=127&q=self%20annotation&type=text&output=html" id="link-id173d7458">"Self Annotation & the Semantic Web" in a number of prior posts</a> which, by the way, should be <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/weblog/public/search.vspx?blogid=127&type=text&kwds=self%20annotation&OpenSearch" id="link-id10b12208">DataRSS compatible right now</a> due to Yahoo's support of OpenSearch <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data" id="link-id0x1b8412e8">Data</a> Providers (which this <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Blog" id="link-id170b8df8">Blog</a> Space has been for eons).</p> <p>Today, have many communities adding strucuture to the Web (via their respective tools of preference) without explicitly realizing what they are contributing. Every RSS/Atom feed, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Tag" id="link-id183d5178">Tag</a>, Weblog, Shared Bookmark, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/WikiWord" id="link-id10c5e758">Wikiword</a>, Microformat, Microformat++ (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Embedded_RDF" id="link-id16d8ee40">eRDF</a> or <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/RDFa" id="link-id1059a688">RDFa</a>), <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/GRDDL" id="link-id1090ae10">GRDDL</a> stylesheet, and RDFizer etc.. is a piece of structured <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data">data</a>.</p> <p>Finally, the different communities are all finding ways to work together (thank heavens!) and the results are going to be cataclysmic when it all plays out :-)</p> <p>Data, Structure, and Extraction are the keys to the Semantic Life! First you get the Data in a container (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id180e5648">information</a> resource), and then you add Structure to the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information" id="link-id103801e0">information</a> resource (RSS, Atom, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Microformats" id="link-id17825e40">microformats</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/RDFa" id="link-id189a8738">RDFa</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Embedded_RDF" id="link-id1933d5c0">eRDF</a>, SIOC, FOAF, etc.), once you have Structure RDFization (i.e. transformation to <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id19744878">Linked Data</a>) is a synch thanks to <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Resource_Description_Framework" id="link-id180dde30">RDF</a> Middleware (as per <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/weblog/public/search.vspx?blogid=127&type=text&kwds=self%20annotation&OpenSearch" id="link-id16dc3130">earlier RDF middleware posts</a>).</p>
Commercializing the Semantic Web
2008-05-18T14:58:26Z
2008-05-18T10:58:26.000003-04:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1332
<p>I just listen to, and very much enjoyed (lots of chuckling) <a href="http://www.dajobe.org/" id="link-id177310c8">Dave Beckett</a>'s podcast interview on the <a href="http://talk.talis.com/" id="link-id1056ec98">Talis podcast network</a>. Clearly Dave has a bent for funny project names etc.. He also introduced "Inter-Webs" (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web">Web</a> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data">Data</a> Spaces in my parlance) towards the end of the interview.</p> <p> <a href="http://www.mediaslate.org/wp/about/" id="link-idfc558f0">Trent Adams</a>, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/49b/4b5" id="link-id107137b0">Steve Greenberg</a>, and I, also had a podcast chat about <a href="http://www.mediaslate.org/wp/2008/03/29/dataportability-in-motion-podcast/" id="link-id10663ec8">Web Data Portability and Accessibility (Linked Data)</a>. I also remixed <a href="http://www.johnbreslin.com/" id="link-id104617f0">Jon Breslin</a>'s "<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/Cloud/dataportability-and-me-introducing-sioc-foaf-and-the-semantic-web/" id="link-id12ca2c70">Data Portability & Me</a>" presentation to produce: "<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/Cloud/data-accessibility-and-me-introducing-sioc-foaf-and-the-linked-data-web/" id="link-idfdf0cd8">Data Accessibility & Me</a>". </p> <p>The podcasts interviews and presentations provide contributions to the broadening discourse about Open Data Access / Connectivity on the Web.</p>
Recent Data Portability, Linked Data, and Open Data Access Podcasts
2008-04-09T17:22:23Z
2008-04-09T13:22:23.000002-04:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1330
<p>One of the biggest impediments to the adoption of technology is the cost burden typically associated with doing the right thing. For instance, requirements for making the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data">Linked Data</a> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/World_Wide_Web">Web</a> (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Giant_Global_Graph">GGG</a>) buzz would include the following (paraphrasing <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card#i">TimBL</a>'s original <a href="http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html">Linked Data meme</a>): </p> <ul>-- identifying the things you observe, or stumble upon, using URIs (aka <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Entity">Entity</a> IDs)</ul> <ul>-- construct URIs using <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol">HTTP</a> so that the Web provides a channel for referencing things elsewhere (remote object referencing)</ul> <ul>-- Expose things in your <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data">Data</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Spaces">Space</a>(s) that are potentially useful to other Web users via URIs</ul> <ul>-- Link to other Web accessible things using their URIs.</ul> <p>The list is nice, but actual execution can be challenging. For instance, when writing a <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Blog">blog</a> post, or constructing a <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/WikiWord">WikiWord</a>, would you have enough disposable time to go searching for these URIs? Or would you compromise and continue to inject "Literal" values into the Web, leaving it to the reasoning endowed human reader to connect the dots?</p> <p>Anyway, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/OpenLink_Data_Spaces">OpenLink Data Spaces</a> is now equipped with a <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Glossary">Glossary</a> system that allows me to manage terms, meaning of terms, and hyper-linking of phrases and words matching associated with my terms. The great thing about all of this is that everything I do is scoped to <a href="http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/kidehen">my Data Space</a> (my universe of discourse), I don't break or impede the other meanings of these terms outside my Data Space. The Glossary system can be shared with anyone I choose to share it with, and even better, it makes my upstreaming (rules based replication) style of blogging even more productive :-) </p> <p>Remember, on the Linked Data Web, who you know doesn't matter as much as what your are connected to, directly or indirectly. <a href="http://www.jasonkolb.com/">Jason Kolb</a> covers this issue in his post: <a href="http://www.jasonkolb.com/weblog/2008/03/users-as-data-c.html" id="link-id1586a468">People as Data Connectors</a>, and so doesFrederick Giasson via a recent post titled: <a href="http://fgiasson.com/blog/index.php/2008/03/11/networks-are-everywhere/" id="link-id108b9010">Networks are everywhere</a>. For instance, this blog post (or the entire Blog) is a bona fide <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Resource_Description_Framework">RDF</a> Linked Data Source, you can use it as the Data Source of a <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SPARQL">SPARQL</a> Query to find things that aren't even mentioned in this post, since all you are doing is beaming a query through my Data Space (a container of Linked Data Graphs). On that note, let's re-watch <a href="http://blog.jonudell.net/">Jon Udell</a>'s <a href="http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/queryingBlogs.html" id="link-id108c0908">"On-Demand-Blogosphere" screencast from 2006</a> :-)</p>
The Cost of doing the Right Thing
2008-03-29T04:50:07Z
2008-03-29T00:50:07.000002-04:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1325
<p> <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/207/489" id="link-id10914030">John Schmidt</a>, from Informatica, penned an interesting post titled: <a href="http://blogs.informatica.com/enterprise_data_management/2008/03/it_doesnt_matter_integration_d.html" id="link-idd6d76d8">IT Doesn't Matter - Integration Does</a>. </p> <p>Yes, integration is hard, but I do profoundly believe that what's been happening on the Web over the last 10 or so years also applies to the Enterprise, and by this I absolutely do not mean "Enterprise 2.0" since "2.0" and productive agility do not compute in my realm of discourse. </p> <blockquote>large collections of RSS feeds, Wikiwords, Shared Bookmarks, Discussion Forums etc.. when disconnected at the data level (i.e. hosted in pages with no access to the "data behind") simply offer information deluge and inertia (there are only so many hours for processing opaque information sources in a given day).</blockquote> <p>Enterprises fundamentally need to process information efficiently as part of a perpetual assessment of their relative competitive Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SWOT_analysis" id="link-id10776fe8">SWOT</a>), in existing and/or future markets. Historically, IT acquisitions have run counter intuitively to the aforementioned quest for "Ability" due to the predominance of "rip and replace" approach technology acquisition that repeatedly creates and perpetuates information silos across Application, Database, Operating System, Development Environment boundaries. The sequence of events typically occurs as follows:</p> <ol> <li> applications are acquired on a problem by problem basis</li> <li>back-end application databases are discovered once ad-hoc information views are sought by <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information_worker" id="link-id10a111c8">information workers</a> </li> <li>back-end database disparity across applications is discovered once holistic views are sought by <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Knowledge_worker" id="link-id107997d8">knowledge workers</a> (typically <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Domain_expert" id="link-id102ddf08">domain experts</a>).</li> </ol> <p>In the early to mid 90's (pre ubiquitous Web), operating system, programming language, operating system, and development framework independence inside the enterprise was technically achievable via ODBC (due to it's platform independence). That said, DBMS specific <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Open_Database_Connectivity" id="link-id10889d20">ODBC</a> channels alone couldn't address the holistic requirements associated with Conceptual Views of disparate data sources, hence the need for Data Access Virtualization via <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Federated_database_system" id="link-id10884490">Virtual Database</a> Engine technology.</p> <p>Just as is the case on the Web today, with the emergence of the "Linked Data" meme, enterprises now have a powerful mechanism for exploiting the Data Integration benefits associated with generating Data Objects from disparate data sources, endowed with HTTP based IDs (URIs).</p> <p>Conceptualizing access to data exposed Databases APIs, SOA based Web Services (SOAP style Web Services), Web 2.0 APIs (REST style Web Services), XML Views of <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SQL" id="link-id117f8a00">SQL</a> Data (<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SQL/XML" id="link-id104bb730">SQLX</a>), pure XML etc.. is problem area addressed by RDF aware middleware (<a href="http://esw.w3.org/topic/ConverterToRdf" id="link-id10a9deb8">RDFizers</a> e.g <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/presentations/Virtuoso_Sponger_1/Virtuoso_Sponger_1.html" id="link-id10256fb0">Virtuoso Sponger</a>).</p> <img src="http://myopenlink.net:8890/%7Ekidehen/Public/images/URI_Data_Source_Pyra_Enterp.png" /> <p>Here are examples of what <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/presentations/RDF_Mapping_Presentation_W3C_workshop3/RDF_Mapping_Presentation_W3C_workshop3.html" id="link-id129a6a30">SQL Rows exposed as RDF Data Objects </a>(identified using HTTP based URIs) would look like outside or behind a corporate firewall:</p> <ul> Customer - <a href="http://demo.openlinksw.com/Northwind/Customer/ALFKI#this" id="link-id1183acd8">Alfreds Futterkiste</a> </ul> <ul>Customer Contact - <a href="http://demo.openlinksw.com/Northwind/CustomerContact/ALFKI#this" id="link-id11746bb0">Maria Anders</a> </ul> <ul>Salesrep - <a href="http://demo.openlinksw.com/Northwind/Employee/NancyDavolio1#this" id="link-idff76ed8">Nancy Davolio</a> </ul> <ul>Customer Orders Numbers - <a href="http://demo.openlinksw.com/Northwind/Order/11084#this" id="link-id10ca2648">11084</a>, <a href="http://demo.openlinksw.com/Northwind/Order/11011#this" id="link-id11736160">11011</a>, <a href="http://demo.openlinksw.com/Northwind/Order/11078#this" id="link-id108156e0">11078</a>, <a href="http://demo.openlinksw.com/Northwind/Order/11088#this" id="link-id10747f30">11085</a> </ul> <p>What's Good for the Web Goose (<a href="http://kidehen.idehen.net/dataspace/person/kidehen%23this%3E" id="link-id10a33c50">Personal Data Space URIs</a>) is good for the Enterprise Gander (<a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/organization/openlink#this" id="link-id109fbbe0">Enterprise Data Space URIs</a>).</p> <h2>Related</h2> <ul> <a href="http://blogs.informatica.com/enterprise_data_management/2008/02/data_access_a_cultural_or_tech.html" id="link-idffe8168">Data Access - A Cultural or Technical Challenge?</a> </ul>
Linked Data is vital to Enterprise Integration driven Agility
2008-03-22T18:13:41Z
2008-03-22T14:13:41.000002-04:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1289
<p>As 2007 came to a close I repeatedly mulled over the idea of putting together a usual "year in review" and a set of predictions for the coming year etc. Anyway, the more I pondered, the smaller the list became. While pondering (as 2008 rolled around), the <a href="http://www.techmeme.com/080103/p154#a080103p154" id="link-id113db9a0">Blogosphere was set ablaze with the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Robert_Scoble" id="link-idfe12a58">Robert Scoble</a>'s announcement of his account suspension by Facebook</a>. Of course, many chimed in expressing views either side of the ensuing debate: <a href="http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/01/03/scobleAndHisFacebookData.html" id="link-id161e7c48">Who is right -- Scoble or Facebook</a>. The more I assimilated the views expressed about this event, the more ironic I found the general discourse, for the following reasons:</p> <ol> <li> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Web_2.0" id="link-id16f6f3e0">Web 2.0</a> is fundamentally about <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Web_service" id="link-id1770f3c0">Web Services</a> as the prime vehicle for interactions across "points of Web presence"</li> <li> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Facebook" id="link-id162f3f60">Facebook</a> is a Web 2.0 hosted service for <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Social_Networking" id="link-id16e1dfc8">social networking</a> that provides Web Services APIs for accessing data in the Facebook data space. You have to do so "on the fly" within clearly defined constraints i.e you can interact with data across your social network via Facebook APIs, but you cannot cache the data (perform an export style dump of the data)</li> <li> Facebook is a main driver of the term: "social graph", but their underlying data model is relational and the Web Services response (data you get back) doesn't return a data graph, instead it returns an tree (i.e XML)</li> <li> <a href="http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&q=scoble+semantic+web&btnG=Search+Blogs" id="link-id16680d08">Scoble's had a number of close encounters with Linked Data Web | Semantic Data Web | Web 3.0 aficionados</a> in various forms throughout 2007, but still doesn't quite make the connection between Web Services APIs as part of a processing pipeline that includes structured data extraction from XML data en route to producing Data Graphs comprised of Data Objects (Entities) endowed with: <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Identity_%28object-oriented_programming%29" id="link-id16af1f98">Unique Identifiers</a>, Classification or Categorization schemes, Attributes, and Relationships prescribed by one or more shared Data Dictionaries/Schemas/Ontologies</li> <li> A global information bus that exposes a <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data" id="link-id16ce7c68">Linked Data</a> mesh comprised of Data Objects, Object Attributes, and Object Relationships across "points of Web presence" is what <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card#i" id="link-id1aa304e0">TimBL</a> described in 1998 (<a href="http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html" id="link-id1a822db0">Semantic Web Roadmap</a>) and more recently in 2007 (<a href="http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/215" id="link-id181e5998">Giant Global Graph</a>)</li> <li> The Linked Data mesh (i.e Linked Data Web or GGG) is anchored by the use of HTTP to mint Location, Structure, and Value independent Object Identifiers called <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Uniform_Resource_Identifier" id="link-id16eae370">URI</a>s or <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/IRI" id="link-idffe16b8">IRI</a>s. In addition, the Linked Data Web is also equipped with a query language, protocol, and results serialization format for XML and JSON called: SPARQL. </li> </ol> <p>So, unlike Scoble, I am able to make my Facebook Data portable without violating Facebook rules (no data caching outside Facebook realm) by doing the following:</p> <ol> <li> Use an RDFizer for Facebook to convert XML response data from Facebook Web Services into RDF "on the fly" Ensure that my RDF is comprised of Object Identifiers that are HTTP based and thereby dereferencable (i.e. I can use SPARQL to unravel the Linked Data Graph in my Facebook data space)</li> <li> The act of data dereferencing enables me to expose my Facebook Data as Linked Data associated with my <a href="http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this" id="link-id16b3e9d0">Personal URI</a> </li> <li> This interaction only occurs via my data space and in all cases the interactions with data work via my <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1172" id="link-id16c628b8">RDFizer middleware</a> (e.g the <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/presentations/Virtuoso_Sponger_1/Virtuoso_Sponger_1.html" id="link-id1572fb28">Virtuoso Sponger</a>) that talks directly to Facebook Web Services. </li> </ol> <p>In a nutshell, my Linked Data Space enables you to reference data in my data space via Object Identifiers (URIs), and some cases the Object IDs and Graphs are constructed on the fly via RDFization middleware.</p> <p>Here are my URIs that provide different paths to my Facebook Data Space:</p> <ul> <a href="http://myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this" id="link-id16f817a8"> Personal URI</a> </ul> <ul> <a href="http://myopenlink.net/proxy?url=http%3A//www.facebook.com/people/Kingsley_Idehen/605980750&force=rdf&login=kidehen" id="link-id1a8e5950">My Facebook Data Space</a> (best viewed via a <a href="http://demo.openlinksw.com/rdfbrowser/?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fmyopenlink.net%2Fproxy%3Furl%3Dhttp%253A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpeople%2FKingsley_Idehen%2F605980750%26force%3Drdf%26login%3Dkidehen" id="link-id15476588">Linked Data Browser/Viewer</a> session) </ul> <ul> <a href="http://myopenlink.net/proxy?url=http%3A//www.facebook.com/album.php%3Faid%3D14768%26id%3D605980750&force=rdf&login=kidehen" id="link-id16e3bcf0">My Facebook Photo Gallery -- WWW2007 Photo Collection</a> (also best viewed via a <a href="http://demo.openlinksw.com/rdfbrowser/?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fmyopenlink.net%2Fproxy%3Furl%3Dhttp%253A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Falbum.php%253Faid%253D14768%2526id%253D605980750%26force%3Drdf%26login%3Dkidehen" id="link-id16e10270">Linked Data Browser/Viewer</a> session) </ul> <p>To conclude, 2008 is clearly the inflection year during which we will final unshackle Data and Identity from the confines of "Web Data Silos" by leveraging the HTTP, SPARQL, and RDF induced virtues of Linked Data. </p> <p>Related Posts:</p> <ol> <li> <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/2008_the_rise_of_linked" id="link-id156baac0">2008 and the Rise of Linked Data</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/data_portability_scoble_explains" id="link-id16291310">Scoble Right, Wrong, and Beyond</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/30/talking-with-tim-berners-lee-inventor-of-the-web/" id="link-id163c9c38">Scoble interviewing TimBL</a> (note to Scoble: re-watch your interview since he made some specific points about Linked Data and URIs that you need to grasp)</li> <li>Prior Blog posts my this Blog Data Space that include the literal patterns: <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/weblog/public/search.vspx?blogid=127&q=scoble%20semantic%20web&type=text&output=html" id="link-id163e6cd0">Scoble Semantic Web</a> </li> </ol>
2008, Facebook Data Portability, and the Giant Global Graph of Linked Data
2008-01-07T16:44:42Z
2008-01-07T11:44:42.000007-05:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1254
<p>The motivation behind this post is a response to the <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com">Read/WriteWeb</a> post titled: <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/semantic_web_difficulties_with_classic_approach.php">Semantic Web: Difficulties with the Classic Approach</a>.</p> <p>First off, I am going to focus on the Semantic Data Web aspect of the overall Semantic Web vision (a continuum) as this is what we have now. I am also writing this post as a deliberate contribution to the discourse swirling around the real topic: Semantic Web Value Proposition.</p> <h2>Situation Analysis</h2> <p>We are in the early stages of the long anticipated<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Knowledge_economy"> Knowledge Economy</a>. That being the case, it would be safe to assume that information access, processing, and dissemination are of utmost importance to individuals and organizations alike. You don't produce knowledge in a vacum! Likewise, you can produce Information in a vacum, you need Data.</p> <h2>The Semantic Data Web's value to Individuals</h2> <b>Problem:</b> <p>Increasingly, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Blog">Blogs</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Wiki">Wikis</a>, <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Social_bookmarking">Shared Bookmarks</a>, Photo Galleries, Discussion Forums, Shared Calendars and the like, have become invaluable tools for individual and organizational participation in Web enabled global discourse (where a lot of knowledge is discovered). These tools, are typically associated with <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Web_2">Web 2.0</a>, implying Read-Write access via <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Web_service">Web Services</a>, centralized application hosting, and data lock-in (silos).</p> <p>The reality expressed above is a recipe for "<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Information_overload">Information Overload</a>" and complete annihilation of ones effective pursuit and exploitation of knowledge due "Time Scarcity" (note: disconnecting is not an option). Information abundance is inversely related to available processing time (for humans in particular). In my case for instance, I was actively subscribed to over 500+ RSS feeds in 2003. As of today, I've simply stopped counting, and that's just my Weblog Data Space. Then add to that, all of the Discussions I track across Blogs, wikis, message boards, mailing lists, traditional usnet discussion forumns, and the like, and I think you get the picture. </p> <p>Beyond information overload, Web 2.0 data is "Semi-Structured" by way of it's dominant data containers ((X)HTML, RSS, Atom documents and data streams etc.) lacking semantics that formally expose individual data items as distinct entities, endowed with unambiguous naming / identification, descriptive attributes (a type of property/predicate), and relationships (a type of property/predicate).</p> <b>Solution:</b> <p>Devise a standard for Structured Data Semantics that is compatible with the <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1231">Web Information BUS</a>.</p> <p>Produce <a href="http://www.mkbergman.com/?p=153">structured data</a> (entities, entity types, entity relationships) from Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 resources that already exists on the Web such that individual entities, their attributes, and relationships are accessible and discernible to software agents (machines).</p> <p>Once the entities are individually exposed, the next requirement is a mechanism for selective access to these entities i.e. a query language. </p> <p> Semantic Data Web Technologies that facilitate the solution described above include:</p> <b>Structured Data Standards:</b> <ul> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/RDF">RDF</a> - Data Model for structured data</ul> <ul>RDF/XML - A serialization format for RDF based structured data</ul> <ul> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Notation_3">N3</a> / <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Turtle_%28syntax%29">Turtle</a> - more human friendly serialization formats for RDF based structured data</ul> <b>Entity Exposure & Generation:</b> <ul> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/GRDDL">GRDDL</a> - enables association between XHTML pages and XSLT stylesheets that facilitates loosely coupled "on the fly" extraction of RDF from non RDF documents</ul> <ul> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/RDFa">RDFa</a> - enables document publishers or viewers (i.e those repurposing or annotating) to embed structured data into existing XHTML documents</ul> <ul> <a href="http://research.talis.com/2005/erdf/wiki/Main/RdfInHtml">eRDF</a> - another option for embedding structured RDF data within (X)HTML documents</ul> <ul> <a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/%7Ekidehen/?id=1172">RDF Middleware</a> - typically incorporating GRDDL, RDFa, eRDF, and custom extraction and mapping as part of a structured data production pipeline</ul>. <b>Entity Naming & Identification:</b> <p>Use of URIs or IRIs for uniquely identifying physical (HTML Documents, Image Files, Multimedia Files etc..) and abstract (People, Places, Music, and other abstract things). </p> <b>Entity Access & Querying:</b> <ul> <p> <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SPARQL">SPARQL</a> Query Language - the <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SQL">SQL</a> analog of the Semantic Data Web that enables query constructs that target named entities, entity attributes, and entity relationships</p> </ul> <ul> <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-protocol/">SPARQL Protocol</a> - a <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Representational_State_Transfer">REST</a> or <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/SOAP">SOAP</a> style Web Service for transporting SPARQL Queries to Structured Data Sources.</ul> <ul> <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-XMLres/">SPARQL Results Serialization Formats</a> - query results serialization formats that includes XML(sparql+xml) and JSON.</ul> <h2>The Semantic Data Web's value to Organizations</h2> <b>Problem:</b> <p>Organizations are rife with a plethora of business systems that are built atop a myriad of database engines, sourced from a variety of DBMS vendors. A typical organization would have a different database engine, from a specific DBMS vendor, underlying critical business applications such as: Human Resource Management (HR), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Accounting, Supply Chain Management etc. In a nutshell, you have DBMS Engines, and DBMS Schema heterogeneity permeating the IT infrastructure of organizations on a global scale, making Data & Information Integration the biggest headache across all IT driven organizations.</p> <b>Solution:</b> <p>Alleviation of the pain (costs) associated with Data & Information Integration. </p> <b>Semantic Data Web offerings:</b> <p>A dexterous data model (RDF) that enables the construction of conceptual views of disparate data sources across an organization based on existing web architecture components such as HTTP and URIs.</p> <p>Existing middleware solutions that facilitate the exposure of SQL DBMS data as RDF based Structured Data include:</p> <ul> <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/wiki/main/Main/VOSSQLRDF">Virtuoso's Meta Schema Language for RDF Views of SQL Data</a> (also see the <a href="http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/Whitepapers/pdf/Virtuoso_SQL_to_RDF_Mapping.pdf">Virtuoso SQL-RDF Technical White Paper</a>)</ul> <ul> <a href="http://sites.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/suhl/bizer/D2RQ/">D2RQ</a> </ul> <ul> <a href="http://ccnt.zju.edu.cn/projects/dartgrid">DataGrid</a> </ul> <ul> <a href="http://esw.w3.org/topic/RdfAndSql">Others</a> </ul> <p> BTW - There is an upcoming <a href="http://www.w3.org/2007/03/RdfRDB/">W3C Workshop covering the integration of SQL and RDF data</a>.</p> <h2>Conclusion</h2> <p>The Semantic Data Web is here, it's value delivery vehicle is the URI. The URI is a conduit to Interlinked Structured Data (RDF based Linked Data) derived from existing data sources on the World Wide Web alongside data continuously injected into the Web by organizations world wide. Ironically, the Semantic Data Web only platform that crystallizes the: Information at Your Fingertips vision, without development environment, operating system, application, or database lock-in. You simply click on a <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Linked_Data">Linked Data URI</a> and the serendipitous exploration and discovery of data commences.</p> <p>The unobtrusive emergence of the Semantic Data Web is a reflection of the soundness of the underlying Semantic Web vision.</p> <p>If you are excited about <a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Mashup_%28web_application_hybrid%29">Mash-ups</a> then your are a Semantic Web enthusiast and benefactor in the making, because you only "Mash" (brute force data extraction and interlinking) because you can't "Mesh" (natural data extraction and interlinking). Likewise, if you are a social-networking, open social-graph, or portable social-network enthusiast, then you are also a Semantic Data Web benefactor and enthusiasts, because your "values" (yes, the values associated with the properties that define you e.g your interests etc) are the fundamental basis for portable, open, social-networking, which is what the Semantic Data Web hands to you on a platter without compromise (i.e. data lock-in or loss of data ownership).</p> <b>Some practical examples of Semantic Data Web prowess:</b> <ul> <a href="http://demo.openlinksw.com/DAV/JS/rdfbrowser/index.html?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.readwriteweb.com%2Farchives%2Fsemantic_web_difficulties_with_classic_approach.php">Read/WriteWeb via the OpenLink Data Web Browser</a> (click on the different viewing tabs to see what structured data exploitation in action)</ul> <ul> <a href="http://browser.zitgist.com/?uri=http%3A//www.readwriteweb.com/archives/semantic_web_difficulties_with_classic_approach.php">Read/WriteWeb via the Zitgist Data Web Browser</a> </ul> <ul> <a href="http:/dbpedia.org">DBpedia</a> (*note: I deliberately use DBpedia URIs in my posts where I would otherwise have used a Wikipedia article URI*)</ul> <ul> <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/zitgist-browser-linker/">Zitgist zLinks</a> - <a href="http://www.mkbergman.com/?p=400">Mike Bergman's Blog Post also demonstrating zLinks</a> </ul>
Semantic Web Value Proposition
2007-09-21T12:05:07Z
2007-09-21T08:05:07.000009-04:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1140
<blockquote> <p> <a href="http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/02/15/xmp-and-microformats-revisited/#comments">XMP and microformats revisited</a>: "</p> <div class="snap_preview"> <p> Yesterday I exercised poetic license when I suggested that Adobe’s <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/xmp/overview.html">Extensible metadata platform (XMP)</a> was not only the spiritual cousin of microformats like <a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar">hCalendar</a> but also, perhaps, more likely to see widespread use in the near term. My poetic license was revoked, though, in a couple of comments: </p> <blockquote> <p> <a href="http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2007/02/14/xmp-microformat/">Mike Linksvayer</a>: How someone as massively clued-in as Jon Udell could be so misled as to describe XMP as a microformat is beyond me. </p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p> <a href="http://dannyayers.com/2007/02/15/microsoft-vista-slipup">Danny Ayers</a>: Like Mike I don’t really understand Jon’s references to microformats - I first assumed he meant XMP could be replaced with a uF. </p> </blockquote> <p> Actually, I’m serious about this. If I step back and ask myself what are the essential qualities of a microformat, it’s a short list: </p> <ol> <li>A small chunk of machine-readable metadata,</li> <li>embedded in a document.</li> </ol> <p> Mike notes: </p> <blockquote> <p> XMP is embedded in a binary file, completely opaque to nearly all users; microformats put a premium on (practically require) colocation of metadata with human-visible HTML. </p> </blockquote> <p> Yes, I understand. And as someone who is composing this blog entry as XHTML, in emacs, using a semantic CSS tag that will enable me to search for quotes by Mike Linksvayer and find the above fragment, I’m obviously all about metadata coexisting with human-readable HTML. And I’ve been applying this technique since <a href="http://webservices.xml.com/lpt/a/1223">long before</a> I ever heard the term microformats — my own term was originally microcontent. </p> <p>(Via <a href="http://blog.jonudell.net">Jon Udell</a>.)</p> <p>I believe Jon is acknowledging the fact that the propagation of metadata in "Binary based" Web data sources is no different to the microformats based propagation that is currently underway in full swing across the "Text based" Web data sources realm. He is reiterating the fact that the Web is self-annotating (exponentially) by way of Metadata Embedding. And yes, what he describes is a similar to Microformats in substance and propagation style :-)</p> <p>Here is what I believe Jon is hoping to see:</p> <ol> <li> Binary files become valid data sources for Metadata oriented query processing. Technically I mean a binary file becomes a valid data source from which RDF Instance could be generated on the fly. </li> <li>Enhanement or unveiling of the Data Web by way of meshups that combine metadata from an array or data sources (not just the XML, (X)HTML, or RDF variety)</li> <li>The ability to use an array of query languages and techniques to construct these meshups</li> </ol> <p>My little "<a href="http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/%7Ekidehen/index.vspx?page=&id=1137">Hello Data Web!</a>" meme was about demonstrating a view that Danny has sought for a while: unobtrusive <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/grddl-scenarios/">meshing of microformats and RDF via GRDDL and SPARQL</a> binding that simply eliminates the often perceived "RDF Tax". Danny, Jon, myself, and many others have always understood that making the Data Web (Web of RDF Instance Data) more of a Force (Star Wars style) is the key to unravelling the power of the "Web as a Database". Of course, we also tend the describe our nirvana in different ways that sometimes obscures the fundamental commonality of vision that we all share.</p> <p> Personally, I believe everyone should simply "feel the force" or observe "the bright and dark sides of the force" that is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework">RDF</a>. When this occurs en masse there will be a global epiphany (similar to what happened around the time of the initial unveiling of the Web of Hypertext). Jon's meme brings the often overlooked realm of binary based metadata sources into the general discourse.</p> <p>JBinary Files as bona fide Data Web URIs (i.e. Metadata Sources) is much closer than you think :-) I should have my "Hello Data Web of Binary Data Sources" unveiled very soon!</p> </div> </blockquote>
XMP and microformats revisited
2007-02-17T17:43:05Z
2007-02-17T12:43:05.000001-05:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com
http://www.openlinksw.com/dataspace/kidehen@openlinksw.com/weblog/kidehen@openlinksw.com%27s%20BLOG%20%5B127%5D/1124
<p>I tried to post a comment to <a href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog">Dare Obasanjo</a>'s blog post: <a href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=0c22a95a-2d81-4f40-bbce-c763d8447468">How Do We Get Rid of Lies on Wikipedia</a>, without success (due to my attempts to add links to the post etc..). Hence a Blog style response instead.</p> <p>Dare:</p> <p>I have been through the Wikipedia fires a few times. If you recall that I actually triggered the early<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0"> Web 2.0 Wikipedia article</a>. along the following lines: </p> <ol> <li> Asked one of my staff to start a post with the sole intention of defining Web 2.0 properly </li> <li> I then attempted to edit the initial post </li> <li> I left a typo re. REST </li> <li> Got set on Fire etc... (see very beginning of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Web_2.0&action=history">Wikipedia Web 2.0 history page</a>) </li> </ol> <p>As annoying as the experience above was, I didn't find this inconsistent with the spirit of Wikipedia (i.e. open contribution and discourse). I felt, at the time, that a lot of historical data was being left in place for future reference etc.. In addition, the ultimate aim of creating an evolving Web 2.0 document did commence albeit some distance from "modern man" re. accuracy and meaningfulness as of my last read (today).</p> <p>Even closer to home, I repeated the process above re. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuoso_Universal_Server">Virtuoso Universal Server</a>. This basically ended up being a live case study on how you handle the Wikipedia NPOV conundurum. Just look at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Virtuoso_Universal_Server">Virtuoso Universal Server Talk Pages</a> to see how the process evolved (the key was Virtuoso's lineage and it's proximity to the very DBMS platform upon which Wikipedia runs i.e <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL">MySQL</a>).</p> <p>Bearing in mind the size and magnitude of Microsoft, there should be no reason why Microsoft's "Microsoft Digital Caucus" ( legions of Staff, MSDN members, Integrators, and other partners) can't simply go into Wikipedia and participate in the edit and discourse process.</p> <p> Truth cannot be surpressed! At best, it can only be temporarily delayed :-) Even more so on the Web!</p>
Microsoft & Wikipedia Imbroglio
2007-01-25T23:47:47Z
2007-01-25T18:47:47.000001-05:00
Kingsley Uyi Idehen
kidehen@openlinksw.com