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Re: [ontolog-forum] Accommodating legacy software

To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 00:42:31 -0400
Message-id: <504040B7.7090004@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On 8/30/12 10:35 PM, John F Sowa wrote:
> David and Paul,
>
> DE
>> I have been told to my face by <redacted> there is nothing for legacy
>> systems in "the stack."
> That's why mainstream IT ignores the SW.    (01)

But that's a misconception resulting from overzealous narratives peddled 
by those who just don't know better due to their general industry 
inexperience. R2RML [1] is an integral part of the stack re., legacy 
RDBMS integration.    (02)

A significant part of the Linked Data concept  is about delivering a 
platform agnostic variant of ODBC and JDBC Data Source Names (DSNs), via 
hyperlinks. In addition, Linked Data picks up where OLE-DB, ADO.NET, JDO 
and the like have failed woefully, due to myopic platform specificity. 
It also addresses to challenging issue of platform agnostic structured 
data representation that accommodates multiple syntaxes -- 
unfortunately, that reality is typically lost in some of the more 
zealous narratives.    (03)

What's been lost in "The Semantic Web" meme is the "Web" aspect. The Web 
is deliberately dexterous in its architecture and boundlessly 
interoperable, as acknowledged in your earlier post.    (04)

>
> PT
>> I guess that bit of intelligence hasn't reached those who are busy
>> putting semantic facades on all sorts of old data: OpenLink URIBurner,
>> apache any23, W3C RDB2RDF, etc.
> Tim B-L's proposal from 2000 went far beyond that.    (05)

URIBurner [2][3] (listed above) is a product from my company (OpenLInk 
Software) built using our Virtuoso product [4]. I think you jumped to a 
conclusion there since our products are all about interoperability with 
legacy systems while also straddling the bleeding edges re., data 
access, integration, and management. We don't make toys, and we've 
deliberately embraced the fundamental essence of the Linked Data meme 
and the broader Semantic Web vision.    (06)

> RDB2RDF does not
> support interoperability -- it is designed to copy RDBs into RDF
> and run everything from a triple store.    (07)

No, it enables you construct materialized or transient views over RDBMS 
data sources.    (08)

>   Interoperable systems
> must be able to interoperate dynamically.    (09)

That's exactly what happens with our products. URIBurner turns existing 
legacy data into 5-Star Linked-Data [5] "on the fly" . It supports a 
massive number of data formats and protocols. You can use the public 
service, make you own instance in an Amazon or Azure cloud, or install 
in your local setup etc..    (010)

>
> PT
>> Sure, a facade is different from a purpose-built semantic system, but
>> those will come later, just as true web applications followed early
>> screen-scraping HTML pages.
> With true semantic interoperability, you don't put facades on data.    (011)

But a facade is layer. At some point everything is a facade because 
everything is layered. You acknowledge this fact all the time. Layering 
doesn't imply overhead, as you know.    (012)

> The data formats and they way they're stored are totally irrelevant.    (013)

They are relevant if you want to offer an solution that works with what 
exists e.g., legacy data and data access protocols. I have to understand 
a legacy format en route to bridging it with something else.
> Data from any source, stored in any format whatever, should be usable
> according to its semantics, not its syntax.    (014)

Yes!  And there's nothing about the Semantic Web technology stack or 
vision (circa. 2012) that contradicts that point. The whole RDF/XML 
affair was a snafu from the past that we have long forgotten :-)    (015)

Links:    (016)

1. http://www.w3.org/TR/r2rml/ - R2RML (we implement this as syntax for 
generating materialized or transient Linked Data views over RDBMS sources)
2. http://uriburner.com -- service home page
3. http://bit.ly/Q4ffou -- how URIBurner (just a public instance of the 
Virtuoso Linked Data Middleware layer) works
4. http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com -- Virtuoso home page
5. http://lab.linkeddata.deri.ie/2010/star-scheme-by-example/ -- 5-Star 
Linked Data .
>
> John
>   
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>
>    (017)


--     (018)

Regards,    (019)

Kingsley Idehen 
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Personal Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
Twitter/Identi.ca handle: @kidehen
Google+ Profile: https://plus.google.com/112399767740508618350/about
LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen    (020)

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