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In my previous post, I discussed relational database management systems and NoSQL stores. While there has been progress in this field, I believe we need to go further, focusing on the meaning of data. The future? It's called Semantic Web.
Rigidity and scalability are not the only concerns when it comes to database management: Today we face an additional problem related to data.
Every time we deal with a specific domain we reinvent the model for that domain. And we are doing a poor job when reinventing, by neglecting the meaning of data.
Imagine a system that knows what your data is about. A system that can handle similar models, and allows you to query data in a federated environment.
If you need to store data, you first search for an existing domain model. You would then take that model, adapt it where necessary, and make the data available to everyone who needs the same information. Data would be referenceable; a simple link would take you to the information you need. A query language would allow you to search for data pattern.
This technology exists
It's called Semantic Web and uses ontologies to define domain data, data structure, and the relations between data. This technology allows us to do graph pattern-matching with a query language called SPARQL, and can also be used to make inferences from our data.
The idea is not new, but advances in storage technology and overall hardware power have increasingly made it a usable, practical reality. The industry is now going through a paradigm shift. It is not enough to simply get hold of lots of data: We need to be able to analyze it, find answers to questions, and infer and interpolate where necessary.
Game changer
A practical example is the automatic recontextualization of information the BBC uses to build their web pages. The BBC web server finds relevant articles and pieces of information in BBC knowledge bases, and presents that information in a specific context: on the football team overview page, for example, or on a team's dedicated page.
Screenshot of the BBC's overview page for Chelsea Football Club, 26 Nov 2014
Similar efforts can be witnessed on the BBC Music and the BBC Programmes pages.
A case study provided to W3C in 2010 by BBC engineers highlighted that "Creating web identifiers for every item the BBC has an interest in, and considering those as aggregations of BBC content about that item, allows us to enable very rich cross-domain user journeys. This means BBC content can be discovered by users in many different ways, and content teams within the organization have a focal point around which to organize their content."
A number of large companies are already using Semantic Web technology successfully in their software and this trend will only increase. As InformationWeekly noted back in 2012, "In much the same way that consumerization drives innovation in end user computing, semantic database technologies deliver benefits that businesses of all stripes should be exploiting."
What's your take on Semantic Web technology?
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Image courtesy Jackman Chiu / Flickr
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Our written material (recipes and documentation) is currently being migrated, and is available in beta on community.appway.com at Support > Knowledge Base.
All information for Appway 6.3 and below is still available here on developer.appway.com while this migration takes place.
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