Blog

Writing on knowledge graphs, ontologies, and data-centric architecture

Articles and working notes from the people at Semantic Arts, newest first.

Topics: All articles · Knowledge graphs and ontologies · Data-centric architecture · Business case and ROI · gist and open standards · AI-ready data · The Whiteboard · News and community

Semantic Technology – Modeling The Real World

by Dave McComb | The Whiteboard

Semantic technology uses ontologies to describe the business in a way that both humans and machines can understand. Since the semantic schema is independent from actual computer systems, e.g., legacy or future applications and databases, it allows us to find […]

An Information System Fairy Tale

by Dave McComb | The Whiteboard

By Dave McComb [The names have been changed to protect somebody.] Once upon a time there was a firm. The firm had many, many employees and of course had payroll and personnel systems. One day the firm was visited by […]

Headless Apps

by Dave McComb | The Whiteboard

In brief: A headless app is an application built as business logic (validation and side effects) behind an API, with no user interface of its own beyond a simple test scaffold. User interface developers then build as many interfaces on […]

Why are scanners so slow?

by Dave McComb | The Whiteboard

Last week over lunch, my 18-year-old son Eli asked me, "Why are scanners so slow? They don't even have as much to do as a copy machine. The copy machine has to move paper, put ink on the page. The […]

Location and navigation in computer systems

by Dave McComb | The Whiteboard

I've been working a lot lately with Semantic Web technologies. In particular I've been reflecting on the profound impact of basing everything on URIs. At one level it doesn't look much different from primary keys or universal ids or GUIDs, […]

Bob DuCharme’s book: Learning SPARQL

by Dave McComb | The Whiteboard

I was hoping I wasn't going to have to learn SPARQL 1.1 from the specs. Bob DuCharme's book Learning SPARQL 1.1 arrived just in time to save me from that fate. The book is well organized, progresses well and has great examples. […]

Report from the Ontology Summit

by Michael Uschold | The Whiteboard

Nearly 100 people in the international ontology community met this past April 18-19 at the sixth annual Ontology Summit to discuss "making the case for ontology." In recent years the number of deployed ontologies has increased dramatically, yet the technology […]

The Integral Aperspectival Strikes Again

by Dave McComb | The Whiteboard

As a few of you know, in our ontology building class we use an example of building an ontology that can determine which flights are international (from a US perspective). We use this example at least in part to show […]

Semantics is/are in the air

by Dave McComb | The Whiteboard

I just got back from another trip to DC, and I'm struck by two things: Everyone (well the males over the drinking age anyway) wear ties. I may have to recycle my tie collection if I'm to spend much more […]

Actualizing Potential – What’s in a Name?

by Michael Uschold | The Whiteboard

A flat tree stump or rock at a convenient height can be used as a chair, but we would not usually call it a chair until someone sits on it. Something designed to be sat on (e.g. a kitchen chair) […]

Role, the overloaded workhorse of the modeling world

by Dave McComb | The Whiteboard

If you are a data modeler or an ontologist, sooner or later you come across "role" and it becomes the "go to" pattern for most of your design problems. I know, I've been there. With a "role" in your hand, […]

← Previous