Introduction

Role: Primary representative for IBM

I am a Senior Technical Staff Member within IBM Rational Software and 
architect of the Jazz Foundation [1]. The Jazz Foundation has made SPARQL 
our only query API and as such we have become the first IBM group 
committed to delivering a product with SPARQL as a key component.

== Bio ==

Having worked with various prototype platforms within IBM Rational over 
the last 4 years building up to the development of the Jazz Foundation I 
have worked with various RDF storage technologies and we have even 
developed our own internal SPARQL engine. Our intent is to make the 
platform used by all of the IBM Rational portfolio basically a Linked Open 
Data provider with SPARQL as our only query language. To this end we've 
decided to restrict ourselves to the standard language and currently 
utilize no extensions (although aggregate support from Jena has been used 
experimentally). 

We'd like to ensure that the SPARQL language evolves to meet the needs of 
the industry in a controlled and viable manner as we would like the option 
of integrating different stores and accessing external endpoints. As is 
often the case an overly complex standard, or a fractured community leads 
to interoperability issues, we see a very cohesive community and at this 
time a very coherent standard and we're willing to help in any way to keep 
it so.

Previously I was the AC rep for Rational Software prior to the acquisition 
by IBM and was the primary rep to the XML Schema WG.

== Contact Info ==

I am best contacted through my IBM email (skjohn@us.ibm.com). I will try 
and use the #sparql channel on the IRC server (as SimonKJ), though with so 
many instant messenger-like clients it's hard to keep all of them in use. 
I am also reachable by phone for urgent or more detailed conversations - 
usually my mobile number is the best (+1.919.200.9973). I am based in 
Research Triangle Park (North Carolina) in the US, Eastern timezone.

== Goals ==

Primarily I am interested in representing the interests of the broad IBM 
software community in seeing SPARQL as a language we can adopt and promote 
for various products. This means that we would like to see robust support 
for certain features, most of which are already under consideration such 
as aggregates. 

[1] http://jazz.net/projects/jazz-foundation/

Thanks,

Simon K. Johnston (skjohn@us.ibm.com) - STSM, Jazz Foundation Services
Mobile: +1 (919) 200-9973
Office: +1 (919) 595-0786 (tie-line: 268-6838)
Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/johnston