Semantic Web Services
Building the Global Database
In 2002 I started an MPhil research project [1] at the University of Wales, Bangor. Going into the project I had the general idea of developing purely Web based database systems, and had already thinking in terms of XML, of course I went in with an open mind, receptive to new ideas.
My motives had been formed by working in the IT industry, not in the glamorous world of mega-corporations like Microsoft, Oracle, IBM etc. or in DOT com but in the grimy realities of most of us, supporting end-users, Database Administration, and application programming in-house or for external clients. Most of this work was done and the end of the systems development life-cycle. By this I mean the making do and mending phase of development, the bit that's not really suppose to happen, much, but as everyone knows, does, a lot. My job in various roles, in various organisations and in different sectors, was to pick up the pieces. In my thesis these issues are explored and expounded upon. In my experience things where done in a top-down fashion. Systems where developed as corporate totems, either as a product to flog, or as an exclusion symbol of commercial/political power. Planned and design from upon high, with inflexible over structuring yet without the attention to detail affording by the proper adoption of development methodologies and documentation that where thought about, but all too often disregarded.
I was trained in a way that treated systems analysis and software engineering as disciplines, in the same way that civil or mechanical engineering is a discipline. It is not necessarily anything to do with getting rich, to me it is more about efficiency, saving time, effort and errors, usually for the grunts doing the work. From my perspective maybe things would be better done from the bottom-up.
Knowledge Management is the discipline concerned with turning meaningless data into usable knowledge. From data information is found by recognising patterns and relationships in data, and knowledge is patterns and relation ships amongst the information. This is a way of thinking in business that goes beyond merely processing data by encouraging knowledge to be recorded and shared. Usable knowledge, gained through Knowledge Management identifies waste, streamlines processes, helps shares best practise, targets customers and improves service.
In building Knowledge Management the challenges come from poor data management, accessing distributed systems and the incompatibility of deferent databases. The bottom line should be obvious. These problems cost time and money.
The Goal is therefore build databases that are extensible, meaning they can change, adapt and up scale without any re-engineering. Also different database should be able to combine and information be shared, likewise without time-consuming and expensive human depended re-engineering. Since the late Nineteen Nineties XML (extensible markup language), has been touted as a solution. It has as the name implies has an extensible structure and being an open standard, is platform independent and vendor neutral and therefore portable in a heterogeneous computing environment, in other words the internet. This is what is being described as Web Services, it is a lose integration of dispersed systems via messaging standards.
XML appears to be the core medium by which different and changing databases could share information and therefore knowledge. Machine understandable information, as opposed to merely machine readable data, is the basis of the Semantic Web a paradigm that sees the current World Wide Web changing into a Global Database. Web Services and Semantic Webs are extensible and scalable solutions to the challenges of management information systems in today’s apparently changing economic landscape. Such solutions have by definition less requirement for human maintenance, a longer operational life span and therefore a greater return on investment.
My thesis project researched network effects such as Metcalfe's Law, Information Assets and transaction costs documenting the raise of the Internet and World Wide Web. I also looked knowledge management systems in distributed environments. Important to this is the dynamic discovery of data structures and achieving trust and consensus between different, changing systems that are necessarily decentralised and with no overall control. A key issue is that of legacy data, viable information and therefore knowledge but in obsolete formats. Mechanism for mapping or transposing these all structures into XML, thus making then available as web services and part of the semantic web was the projects challenge, in other words semantic web building.
Data describing other data is metadata. Data about data is the key to Semantic Web building. XML can be used for many things, as is allows for the creation of ontologies. These are machine-understandable collections of terms and definitions, vocabularies. Two examples of vocabularies that can be expressed in XML include RDF (Resource description framework) and Dublin Core. RDF statements encapsulate a resource with one or many properties with an associated value. It provides a structure that machines can interpret with out prior instructions on how to do so. The Dublin core metadata initiative was established to create standard terminology for metadata, also expressible in XML, Dublin Core expressions can be placed within RDF statements and stored and managed with in XML documents.
Usable XML document creation and management is therefore the key to semantic web building and extensible solutions to the problems found at the back end of the development life cycle.
January 2009[1] The Princples of Teleinformatics 
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Duncan Stonebridge.
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