Socially enhanced enterprise and invididual collaboration is
becoming a focal point for a variety of solutions that offer
erswhile distinct content managment features across the realms of
Blogging, Wikis, Shared Bookmarks, Discussion Forums etc.. as part
of an integrated platform suite. Recently, Socialtext
has caught my attention courtesy of its nice features and benefits page . In addition,
I've also found the Mike 2.0 portal immensely interesting and
valuable, for those with an enterprise collaboration bent.
Anyway, Socialtext and Mike 2.0 (they aren't identical and
juxtaposition isn't seeking to imply this) provide nice
demonstrations of socially enhanced collaboration for individuals
and/or enterprises is all about:
- Identifying Yourself
- Identifying Others (key contributors, peers,
collaborators)
- Serendipitous Discovery of key contributors, peers, and
collaborators
- Serendipitous Discovery by key contributors, peers, and
collaborators
- Develop and sustain relationships via socially enhanced
professional network hybrid
- Utilize your new "trusted network" (which you've personally
indexed) when seeking help or propagating a meme.
As is typically the case in this emerging realm, the critical
issue of discrete "identifiers" (record keys in sense) for data items, data containers,
and data creators (individuals and groups) is overlooked albeit
unintentionally.
How HTTP based Linked Data Addresses the Identifier
Issue
Rather than using platform constrained identifiers such as:
- email address (a "mailto" scheme identifier),
- a dbms user account,
- application specific account, or
- OpenID.
It enables you to leverage the platform independence of HTTP
scheme Identifiers (Generic URIs) such that Identifiers for:
- You,
- Your Peers,
- Your Groups, and
- Your Activity Generated Data,
simply become conduits into a mesh of HTTP -- referencable and accessible -- Linked
Data Objects endowed with High SDQ (Serendipitious Discovery
Quotient). For example my Personal WebID is all anyone needs to know if
they want to explore:
- My Profile (which includes references to data objects
associated with my interests, social-network, calendar, bookmarks
etc.)
- Data generated by my activities across various data spaces (via
data objects associated with my online accounts e.g. Del.icio.us, Twitter, Last.FM)
-
Linked Data Meshups via URIBurner (or any
other Virtuoso instance) that provide an extend
view of my profile
How FOAF+SSL adds Socially aware Security
Even when you reach a point of equilibrium where: your daily
activities trigger orchestratestration of CRUD (Create, Read,
Update, Delete) operations against Linked Data Objects within your
socially enhanced collaboration network, you still have to deal
with the thorny issues of security, that includes the
following:
- Single Sign On,
- Authentication, and
- Data Access Policies.
FOAF+SSL, an application of HTTP based Linked Data, enables you
to enhance your Personal HTTP scheme based Identifer (or WebID) via
the following steps (peformed by a FOAF+SSL compliant
platform):
- Imprint WebID within a self-signed x.509 based public key
(certificate) associated with your private key (generated by
FOAF+SSL platform or manually via OpenSSL)
- Store public key components (modulous and exponent) into your
FOAF based profile document which references your Personal HTTP
Identifier as its primary topic
- Leverage HTTP URL component of WebID for making public key
components (modulous and exponent) available for x.509 certificate
based authentication challenges posed by systems secured by
FOAF+SSL (directly) or OpenID (indirectly via FOAF+SSL to OpenID
proxy services).
Contrary to conventional experiences with all things PKI (Public
Key Infrastructure) related, FOAF+SSL compliant platforms typically
handle the PKI issues as part of the protocol implementation;
thereby protecting you from any administrative tedium without
compromising security.
Conclusions
Understanding how new technology innovations address long
standing problems, or understanding how new solutions inadvertently
fail to address old problems, provides time tested mechanisms for
product selection and value proposition comprehension that
ultimately save scarce resources such as time and money.
If you want to understand real world problem solution #1 with
regards to HTTP based Linked Data look no further than the issues
of secure, socially aware, and platform independent identifiers for
data objects, that build bridges across erstwhile data silos.
If you want to cost-effectively experience what I've outlined in
this post, take a look at OpenLink
Data Spaces (ODS) which is a distributed collaboration
engine (enterprise of individual) built around the Virtuoso
database engines. It simply enhances existing collaboration tools
via the following capabilities:
Addition of Social Dimensions via HTTP based Data Object Identifiers for all Data Items
(if missing)
- Ability to integrate across a myriad of Data Source Types
rather than a select few across RDBM Engines, LDAP, Web Services, and
various HTTP accessible Resources (Hypermedia or Non Hypermedia
content types)
- Addition of FOAF+SSL based authentication
- Addition of FOAF+SSL based Access Control Lists (ACLs) for
policy based data access.
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