The Importance and Application of SHACL in Industry

Since the late '90s, we have been applying semantics to a variety of areas within The Procter & Gamble Company including bioinformatics, chemoinformatics, competitive intelligence, safety & compliance, master data, and supply chains.  As with many large, especially non-tech companies, using new techniques and technology is often an uphill battle on a good day!

Our initial successes were largely driven by applying semantic tech principles via in-house developed software (not really what a consumer goods company wants to invest in!)  As standards were developed and commercial solutions became available, we shelved our code in lieu of better and supported software.  However, as the technology expanded, our use cases did as well.

We have been watching the development of the SHACL standard with great interest as we believe it will allow us to create a much more robust data architecture, a more fluid and fault tolerant data transformation and integration environment as well as enhancing our user's experience with a more "intelligent" user interface.

Our current efforts have been piece-meal with some applications of SPIN and other home-grown or customized tooling.  Once SHACL becomes a W3C standard, however, it will be much easier to convince our corporate architects to widely adopt the technology for all of the reasons mentioned above.  We hope in earnest that this happens in the near future.

Tim Smith

Senior Engineer

Supply Network Operations

Procter & Gamble