The Semantic Web Runs on Oracle
Today Oracle.com rolled out a new virtual press room.
Big deal, right?
Actually, yes. The new press room
runs on a combination of Oracle Database, Oracle SES, and Siderean
Software's Seamark Navigator "semantic Web"
engine.
For
those unfamiliar with the term, the Semantic Web, to describe it
simplistically, is an information processing model in which
computers--via a set of W3C data modeling specifications called
Resource Description Framework (RDF) and other technologies--can
parse deep relationships between data that otherwise would need to be
explicitly created by humans.
This
concept is manifest in the new press room, which permits you to "fly"
though the data--you can follow content relationships that
you otherwise would not know exist. Think of it as an "interactive"
search process, with the relevant keywords being supplied to you,
instead of the other way around.
In
Oracle.com's deployment, Oracle SES serves as the eyes and ears of the
Seamark
Navigator Semantic Web engine by crawling the available content and
metadata, while the Oracle RDF Store (which is fully integrated with
Oracle Database out of the box, BTW) serves as its memory by storing
RDF
data.
This is some really cool technology, you've got to try it.
Update: Forgot to mention that you'll see a very interesting demonstration of this technology as applied to OTN content in early 2007!
