Resources
Books
These books saw the shift to data-centric architecture coming and argued for it 20 years before knowledge graphs, ontologies, and semantic layers became everyday topics for data and AI teams.
The same argument runs through the Data-Centric Manifesto, which more than 1,800 people have signed.
Dave McComb, 2018
Software Wasteland
How the Application-Centric Mindset is Hobbling our Enterprises
10–100×
How much more enterprises spend on software than they need to, by Dave’s estimate.
Enterprise IT is a $3.8 trillion a year industry, and the book argues that most of it is waste: projects that cost tens of millions and run over budget many times over, because each new system starts with its own data model. PwC’s strategy+business interviewed Dave about it the year it came out.
Dave McComb, 2019
The Data-Centric Revolution
Restoring Sanity to Enterprise Information Systems
10×
The drop the book predicts, at a minimum, in the cost of running internal systems once data comes first.
Where Software Wasteland diagnosed the problem, this book describes the way out: keep data as a permanent, shared asset and let applications come and go. Alan Morrison, a senior research fellow at PwC, called it the solution to the problem Software Wasteland explained.
Dave McComb and Cheryl Dunn, 2026
The Future of Accounting
Real time
Accounting data captured as business happens, with no after-the-fact adjustments.
It rethinks accounting from first principles: a single, simple, and extensible data model in place of systems that report history long after it happens, so financial information arrives sooner and is more complete and traceable. John Clements, a CPA and retired Big Four assurance partner, wrote that it offers a way to leave debits and credits behind.
More books by Semantic Arts staff
Dave McComb, 2003
Semantics in Business Systems
What semantics are, and how they affect the way business systems infer, make, and share meaning.
Michael Uschold, 2018
Demystifying OWL for the Enterprise
An introduction to the Web Ontology Language for the people building enterprise ontologies.
Interview
Are You Spending Way Too Much on Software?
Dave McComb on how to curb runaway IT spending, in strategy+business.
Column
The Data-Centric Revolution
Dave McComb’s quarterly column since 2015, first on TDAN.com and now on DATAVERSITY: more than 40 pieces on integration debt, ontology design, knowledge graphs, and what changes when data comes first.
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