Since the semantic model is free of structure, it is easier to map concepts to different structural representations enabling reuse of classes and properties. Reuse is a profound way to reduce complexity. In a traditional system, attributes are not reused. Every time you create a new table and put new attributes on it you’ve created...Continue reading→

An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is not a product but a style of architectural development. It is essentially SOA done right. The essence of an ESB is that all apps and all services talk only to the bus and not directly to each other. To the extent that they talk to each other they are...Continue reading→

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 the commonalities across business processes, which serves to greatly simplify the enterprise architecture. semantic arts_schemaGenerally,...Continue reading→

Sentara Healthcare is a $3 billion conglomerate that includes hospitals, clinics, physician networks, insurance companies, research centers, etc. It offers thousands of services to over two million patients. It is a very complex business. Always on the cutting edge of applying information systems technology to improving healthcare delivery, Sentara engaged Semantic Arts to build the...Continue reading→

At Procter & Gamble, over 10,000 people work in R&D in hundreds of different disciplines. P&G had no traditional information systems capturing the critical information in this brain trust. They engaged Semantic Arts to create an ontology that would organize this vast body of unstructured information into a definitional model that could be used to...Continue reading→

In the late 80’s, I was introduced to the “Don’t Care” Architecture by Sherman Woo, of what was then US West (now Qwest). The Internet existed but the World Wide Web didn’t. Sherman was spearheading something he called the “Global Village.” I don’t remember a lot of the specifics of it, although I do remember...Continue reading→

I’m guessing that many of you puzzle over the same thing I do: “Why do large IT projects cost so much?”As we now know, it’s not the development costs (the development is done) nor the licensing costs (typically a small portion of the total cost). There are many other factors, but the one that I...Continue reading→

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 software vendors who convinced it that its systems were not “state of the art” and...Continue reading→

We’ve been promoting an idea lately that has been around for a while but doesn’t seem to get much press. We’re calling it “headless apps” but it likely has other names out in the wild. We think it’s a major change in emphasis for how applications ought to be built. For almost the last 20...Continue reading→

I was inspired by this article in the Atlantic called “Home Remedy” Turns out this tiny town of 1,730 couldn’t attract and retain doctors and nurses for their 25 bed hospital.  So they found townspeople who wanted to be doctors and nurses and helped put them through school. They have 23 nurses so far this way and...Continue reading→