I just stumbled across an post from ITBusines
Edge titled: How Semantic Technology Can Help Companies with
Integration. While reading the post I encountered the term:
Master Data Manager (MDM), and wondered to
myself, "what's that?" only to realize it's the very same thing I
described as a Data Virtualization or Virtual Database technology (circa.
1998).
Now, if re-labeling can confuse me when applied to a realm I've been
intimately involved with for eons (internet time). I don't want to imagine what
it does for others who aren't that intimately involved with the
important data access and data integration realms.
On the more refreshing side, the article does shed some light on
the potency of RDF and OWL when applied to the construction of
conceptual views of heterogeneous data sources.
"How do you know that data coming from one place
calculates net revenue the same way that data coming from another
place does? You’ve got people using the same term for different
things and different terms for the same things. How do you
reconcile all of that? That’s really what semantic integration is
about."
BTW - I discovered this article via another titled: Understanding Integration And How It Can Help
with SOA, that covers SOA and Integration matters. Again, in
this piece I feel the gradual realization of the virtues that RDF,
OWL, and RDF Linked Data bring to bear in the vital realm
of data integration across heterogeneous data silos.
Conclusion
A number of events, at the micro and macro economic levels, are
forcing attention back to the issue of productive use of existing
IT resources. The trouble with the aforementioned quest is that it
ultimately unveils the global IT affliction known as: heterogeneous
data silos, and the challenges of pain alleviation, that have been
ignored forever or approached inadequately as clearly shown by the
rapid build up of SOA horror stories in the data integration
realm.
Data Integration via conceptualization of heterogenous data
sources, that result in concrete conceptual layer data access and
management, remains the greatest and most potent application of
technologies associated with the "Semantic Web" and/or "Linked Data"
monikers.
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