The first session of the conference consisted of two over-arching descriptions of what the Semantic Web is – not an easy question as there are many different perspectives and, according to one presenter, more than 10 million documents about semantic web on the internet today.
The sweeping overview included various approaches to data management, integration, and representation on the web.
Dave McComb, from Semantic Arts, talked about the history of data management and how semantic technologies are a natural progression and the world is in a similar situation as where relational database technologies were 25 years ago.
I do appreciate the value behind finding structure in apparently structure-less data, as well as the value of being able to mesh multiple databases on the fly, but the examples he chose to demonstrate the power of the “enhanced search” functionality didn’t impress me. Yes, if you’re looking for the Hilton Hotel in Paris and you type “Paris Hilton” into Google, you’re not going to get what you want. Apparently semantic technology will eliminate the need to use your common sense to type “Paris Hilton hotel” into Google.
But they gave us all a free beer.
Significance for CalCPA
When undergoing the radical change in the way our data is managed, integrated and displayed, we need to consider a number of other models including
Model-Driven Development
Service Oriented Architecture
The session also confirmed what I already knew, that adoption of semantic bells and whistles is far bigger than CalCPA alone. This stuff is most valuable to the entire profession, or at least a collective effort of all the state societies
As far as this semantic web technology is concerned, both speakers promised us there will be discussion of the value it can add to an enterprise. I’ve read the case studies; I know they’re out there. I signed up for this conference in search of the middle ground between high end coding and “semantic web is great”. I’m still optimistic.
