ITGumbo: spicing IT up

• Consumer concern about learning new ways of surfing the WWW - educating consumers
• Business value of semantic technology - intermingle with SOA and mashup trends for cost savings, reduced time to market and increased intelligence and functionality; enhancement of current technology (RDBMS) features.
• Justification for existence of metadata - need for metadata and applications that would justify the need.
• How to get there? - rediscovery of what already exists in a new way; by building semantic web in steps: "web of entities" + "web of meanings"; demonstration of value of systems; is there a problem that must be solved with semantic technology.

Is it really necessary for a web surfer to know what technology has been used to build the web content. Probably NO, however, the web surfer must be informed about what information is available on the WWW and how to seek it. If semantic technologies are used only to rediscover what already exists it may not affect the web user, the web user may still continue to use WWW to seek answers to his/her query. The only difference it will make is that the answers to query may be more accurate and fast. The rediscovery will open the gates to new inventions by stimulating the human mind to seek more data to fill the metadata. The easiest way of finding information on the WWW is to type a query into the search box, this is what most web users do, I often do this when I do not know the URL of the information. The other issue they have raised is about the need for metadata, we have discussed here how the normative metadata can be provided and used.

Demonstration of a semantic web application

This example is to demonstrate the basic utility of semantic web, the "open market" concept we have been discussing here and a substitute to Search Engine Page Ranking system. The web user will still type the query in the search box. The SOA applications can be built based on the objective semantic data provided by the car insurance companies. Car resellers can provide a web service to find the best insurance deal based on customer specified parameters. The convenience for the customer and the advantages of semantic web justify the need for normative metadata.