Linked Data in the Enterprise Article

All,

Please read: http://www.semanticweb.com//article.php/3759631

This is the RDB to RDF value proposition in a nutshell (*note to the 
rdb2rdf list members*).

For those of you who didn't attend Linked Data Planet, or even worse, 
couldn't make the 8.30am keynote, I covered the same issues albeit with 
Linked Data Demystification in mind [1].


When all is said and done, we are trying to create dereferencable data 
source names from existing data sources (RDBMS, XML, SOA, (X)HTML, other 
docs) using the time tested concept of "Data Access by Reference". This 
is what SQL CLIs such as ODBC, JDBC, OLE-DB, ADO.NET have, and continue 
to offer in the 'Closed World" realm of your typical enterprise. The 
trouble with these older approaches is that they aren't impervious to 
data access disruptions that arise due to heterogeneity along the 
following lines:

1. DBMS Engine (vendor and data model)
2. DBMS Schemas
3. Operating Systems
4. Network Toplogy
5. Network Transport Protocols
6. Inherent fear of Opennness

Items 1-5 are addressed by simply using HTTP to construct Data Source 
Names (Identifiers aka URIs).  Item 6  will ultimately be addressed by 
the proliferation of Linked Data oriented solutions that extol the 
virtues of Open (albeit policy controlled) Data Access; by crystallizing 
the opportunity costs of remaining pegged / locked into to 'Closed 
World" schemas.



Links:

1. 
http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/presentations/Creating_Deploying_Exploiting_Linked_Data2/Creating_Deploying_Exploiting_Linked_Data2.html 
- Linked Data Planet Keynote

2. http://zitgist.com/company/pr/pr20080717.html  - UMBEL ontology, a 
critical piece of infrastructure for any Non RDF to RDF mapping (e.g. 
RDB to RDF)

3. http://zitgist.com/labs/linked_data.html - Enterprise Linked Data 
(LED) FAQ from Zitgist

4. 
http://events.linkeddata.org/ldow2008/papers/21-servant-linking-enterprise-data.pdf 
- François-Paul Servant's  Linked Data Workshop presentation at WWW2008


-- 


Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	      Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President & CEO 
OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com

Received on Thursday, 17 July 2008 21:00:04 UTC