Conceptual Data Virtualization

Created on 2015-07-02 18:10

Published on 2015-07-02 18:10

Situation Analysis 

 Over the years, you've accumulated a number of line-of-business applications, each of which supports specific operations in a given department. These applications have been developed with intimate binding to a specific SQL-compliant RDBMS (Relational Database Management System).

In recent times, you've increasingly found the need to cross-reference data across these SQL RDBMS-based applications as part of a quest to enhance discovery, analysis, and dissemination of data, information, and knowledge, to the right person, in appropriate form.

Most options presented as a solution to the challenges of this quest are firmly rooted in the "rip and replace" approach to systems evolution. Rather than demonstrably integrating with, and then enhancing, what exists, they remain philosophically focused on a total replacement of that existing infrastructure, moving to an alternative application or DBMS that's just n-times faster.

I've published a new blog post that provides a simple demonstration (with live links, of course!) that shows how conceptual integration can be achieved across disparate SQL RDBMS databases, with heterogeneously shaped and disparately located data, using the kind of controlled natural language constructs inherent to the RDF Language. (It's important to note that this has nothing to do with document serialization formats or content types.).

The post covers:

  1. Remote Table Attachment using ODBC
  2. Automated Class Generation from SQL Table Schema
  3. Automated Class Instance Generation from SQL Table Records
  4. Cross Referencing Vocabulary of Terms generated from SQL Table Schema with a Shared Vocabulary (in this case FOAF which defines Classes and Properties for describing People and Organization) 
  5. Automated Deployment of integration in Linked Open Data form
  6. Use of Reasoning & Inference to provide "Context Lenses" into the bridged data
  7. Use of Reasoning & Inference to improve visual aesthetics of the deployment integration. 

Link: http://kidehen.blogspot.com/2015/07/conceptual-data-virtualization-across.html .

Hashtags: #LinkedData #SemanticWeb #NoSQL #SmartData #BigData