Friday, August 25, 2006
Semantic Metadata Management and SOA Metadata
Several interesting acquisitions have occured in the intersection of the metadata registry and SOA spaces. BEA acquired flashline and WebMethods acquired Cerebra. Having known Jeff Pollock for a few years, I am glad to see a semantic web company seen as a valuable commodity. Jeff is a fellow John Wiley author who co-authored the book (which I recommend as a good read) entitled Adaptive Information.
What does this mean? Primarily two things - first, it is a good example of Combinatorial experimentation which I discuss in my Semantic Web book as a brute-force approach to experimentation (fueled by the internet) where we continually combine things to search for the right combination which leads to productivity leaps.
Of course, I am not saying that combinatorial experimentation is the first or only reason why these acquisitions were made ... BEA and WebMethods are better businesses than that. However, you create new combinations when the current approach is not as effective as it should be.
Thus, the realization that semantics and metadata are critical to implementing the SOA vision.
What does this mean? Primarily two things - first, it is a good example of Combinatorial experimentation which I discuss in my Semantic Web book as a brute-force approach to experimentation (fueled by the internet) where we continually combine things to search for the right combination which leads to productivity leaps.
Of course, I am not saying that combinatorial experimentation is the first or only reason why these acquisitions were made ... BEA and WebMethods are better businesses than that. However, you create new combinations when the current approach is not as effective as it should be.
Thus, the realization that semantics and metadata are critical to implementing the SOA vision.
