Could Google Become the Semantic Web?
Semantic Universe Article | 02.21.10 | By Stephen E. Arnold
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"Describing the Semantic Web as a "Web of data" is not too helpful for most people, I have learned." There's a lot of talk about it, but for most Web users, the idea described in 1981 by Tim Berners-Lee means little.
A number of experts and forward thinking companies do care though, including Google. The patent applications I reviewed while waiting to give a lecture on the topic in 2007 were authored by Ramanathan Guha. The key document, in my opinion, was filed in April 2005, published on February 15, 2007, as "Programmable Search Engine", US2007 00386616 (The mathematical procedures are explained in US2007/00386616, US2007/0038601, US2007/0038603, US2007/0038600, and US2007/0038614. Additional information may be found in the published literature related to the semantic Web and in Google's collection of technical papers in the Google Labs' subsite.)
As an advisor to BearStearns & Co. at that time, I reported in an email that Google had a far-reaching invention in the Ramanathan Guha filings. Furthermore, Google filed on the same day a total of five patent applications related to what Google called the "Programmable Search Engine." My analysis of these documents revealed a solid anchoring in the functions in what I call the "semantic space".
BearStearns published a report containing my analysis in May 2007 as part of equity research for its consumer Internet division. The report caused a minor ripple in the financial world and the information did not reach the popular press due to the limited circulation these dense, technical equity reports get.
Dr. Guha and Tim Bray of OpenText worked on the Meta Content Framework, and Google was making strategic and competitive use of some of the ideas in the W3C spell out Semantic Web activity. What was interesting was that five other "semantic" inventions were filed at about the same time by Google’s attorneys and each was authored by the luminary by Dr. Guha, who had worked at IBM Almaden, founded Epinions.com, and worked on the W3C MTF spell out project.
In 2006, Google acquired a company founded by Dr. Alon Halevy, a respected researcher in what most people describe as data management. The term is misleading because based on my research, Dr. Halevy’s work has implications well beyond what most experts would put under the heading of "database research".
Dr. Halevy's work complemented Dr. Guha's and since 2006, the two strands of research have become part of a broader semantic capability that Google continues to develop at this time. (My analysis of Dr. Halevy's work is available from IDC as Report #213562, published in September 2009.)
Simplifying Dr. Halevy's brilliant work, let me say that it makes possible different types of queries, using some of the features of Dr. Guha's work and new methods that go well beyond Dr. Halevy's patent documents filed when he worked at units of the Bell Labs and Lucent’s research arm. The idea is to enrich an information object with additional tags so that queries about lineage (where something came from) and likelihood of accuracy (the "correctness" of an information element) can be used to generate a result.
When I read the patent applications in February 2007, I realized that Google was operating at a high level in the field of semantic analysis. Its' systems and methods were, in my opinion, much more sophisticated than I had realized. Simplifying again, my research supported my argument that Google was developing techniques that could figure out the meaning of content and "fill in the blanks" when an item of information was ambiguous or missing. Not surprisingly, Google was investing in numerical recipes to enhance its existing systems' software that "reads and understands" the meaning of discourse.
The patent applications included several interesting features. For example, people with information - such as a Web Site Operator - could "push" information to Google. The same technique appears in Google's patent documents related to indexing video content, for instance. The idea is that humans can "teach" Google's system certain things.
A second important concept is the context server. The context server provides a knowledgebase that other Google methods can access for the purposes of determining the metadata required to determine the conceptual meaning of a system process, user action, information object, or any other object processed by the Google system. In simple terms, a context server holds information Google has discovered about a topic, person, company, etc. "for future reference" so that Google's system can disambiguate or "fill in the blanks" when additional information about a document is needed.
A third component, which gains significance now that we have public versions of Google Wave and Google Buzz to explore, is that explicit user actions can be used to index certain content objects. Examples range from clicks on hyperlinks to changes made by users to certain content objects within the Wave.
One of the key concepts is the idea of context. For example, when a zoologist searches for "bat", results should be different from the ones shown to a 4th grade student. The PSE spell out can review previous queries, past clicks, and time spent on a page (called "dwell time" by Google) to gauge the intent of a user's search - once again this evokes the concept of Google becoming a Database of Intentions, described in John Battelle’s book The Search. Further, another important concept is that of Google leveraging the Web - Webmasters (site owners) will be the ones creating the files telling Google what to index, how to index, and what is allowed. Moreover, the PSE will "learn" as it digests metadata provided by the millions of Webmasters.
The heart of the intelligence, therefore, is "context files" with information about users, data, Web sites, and programmatic processes that execute under certain conditions. It is also noteworthy that while site owners can have a lot of control over this process, Dr. Guha’s invention includes processes that reduce Google’s dependence on webmasters’ actions. The PSE can in certain circumstances create the various XML files on its own.
Implications
The semantic initiatives at Google have significant implications for such competitors as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Yahoo, and many other companies working in content processing, content aggregations, and text mining. Google’s methods disclosed in its open source documents may make the content in social systems such as Facebook and Twitter outputs more intelligible, although that remains to be demonstrated in Google's new initiatives in social search.
In my opinion, Google's capabilities in semantic methods could give the firm a competitive advantage in certain types of content processing.
Other implications of Google's semantic methods include:
- Smarter services for enterprise customers, including value added indexing and autonomous software agents that operate on metadata provided by the context server
- More granular detail in search results; for example, car inventory on a lot in addition to the local dealer's phone number and location on a map
- Better spam filtering
- Access to "deep Web" or "invisible Web" content
- Metatagging of non text information (audio and video content)
- Cross generated content from different sources (a dossier on a person such as Michael Jackson prepared by an algorithm, not a human writer for a traditional publication)
- More sophisticated ad matching for text and rich media
The semantic Web is a logical evolution of content available via Web sites. One of the members of my research team asked, "Could Google become the Semantic Web?"
My instinct was to reject the question as specious. After working through Google's technical papers in preparation for my forthcoming study on Google's non-text indexing methods, I am not so sure. Google's share of the Web search market continues to creep upwards. Depending on whose data I examine, Google's share is between 65 and 75 percent. Google's seeping into other market sectors such as telecommunications and education yields significant reach beyond the browser-based search model. New service demonstrations such as Google Squared and the structured query embedded in "normal" Google search results are rich with significance. Run the query “SFO LGA” from Google.com and examine the results. You can see Google’s system figuring out the query, creating a parametric search, and giving you one-click access to travel listings. Although a small demonstration, Google's semantic power is humming under the clean Google interface.
There are implications for intelligence, national security, and public policies activities as well.
Net Net
Google, in my view, is a key player in the Semantic Web. As Google becomes the Internet for many users, it may be that Google's methods define the Semantic Web by virtue of its market presence.
At least one member of my team believes that Google is becoming the Semantic Web. I am not yet convinced, but I am tracking Google's open source information in this important field of information science. Others may want to focus their lasers on this facet of Google as well.
What is Web 3.0?
Suite101 Article | 07.22.08 | By Allan Cho
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What is Web 3.0? What is the difference between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, or the Semantic Web? This article will examine the confusion surrounding Web 3.0.
The war of words between technology evangelists about Web 3.0 continues and, in particular, a series of blog posts were exchanged between Tim O’Reilly and Nova Spivack about the merits of "Web 3.0."
What Is the Difference Between Web 3.0 and Web 2.0?
While O'Reilly believes that Web 3.0 is an extension of Web 2.0, Spivak - regarded as a champion of the term Web 3.0 - believes it will be a third generation web approximately between 2010 and 2020. In order to understand Web 3.0, we must balance it against the existing Web 2.0. In the Web 2.0 universe, searching Google for "Gary Price" will yield a plethora of unrelated hits. Web 3.0 solves this problem by providing context to searching for online information.
Intelligent Web
Web 2.0 is about social networking and mass collaboration with the blurring of lines between content creator and user whereas Web 3.0 is based on "intelligent" web applications using:
- Natural language processing
- Machine-based learning and reasoning
- Intelligent applications
The goal is to tailor online searching and requests specifically to users' preferences and needs. Although the
intelligent web sounds similar to artificial intelligence, it's not quite the same.
Openness
Web 3.0 is about openness. By "opening" application programming interfaces (APIs), protocols, data formats, open-source software platforms and open data, you open up possibilities for creating new tools. Although Unlike openness can result in identity theft, Web 3.0 attempts to remedy this through:
- Open identity
- OpenID
- Open reputation
- The ability for roaming portable identity and personal data.
Interoperability
By opening up access to information, Web 3.0 applications can run on any device, computer, or mobile phone. Applications can be very fast and customizable. Unlike Web 2.0, where programs such as Facebook and MySpace exist in separate silos, Web 3.0 allows users to roam freely from database to database, program to program.
A Global Database
Conceptually, Web 3.0 should be viewed as one large database. Dubbed "The Data Web", web 3.0 uses structured data records published to the Web in reusable and remote-queriable formats. XML technologies such as RDF Schema, OWL, SPARQL will make this possible by allowing information to be read across different programs across the web.
3D Web & Beyond
Web 3.0 will use a three dimensional model and transform it into a series of 3D spaces. Services such as Second Life and the use of personalized avatars will be a common feature of the 3D web. Web 3.0 will extend beyond into the physical; imagine a Web connected to everything not only your cellphone but your car, microwave and clothes, thus truly making for an integrated experience.
Control of Information
Where Web 3.0 is about control of information web 2.0 is about information overload. The most obvious example is in the sheer explosion of programs and passwords on the Web which claim to encourage networking and socialization. Web 3.0 attempts to bring order and allow users to be more accurate in searching and finding precisely what they want.
Semantic Web versus Web 3.0?
What is most confusing is the difference between the Semantic Web and Web 3.0 – both are conceptual entities. However, rather than competing spaces they should be viewed as successive layers that are developing. By adding the semantic web to Web 2.0, we move conceptually closer to web 3.0. The underlying technologies of the Semantic Web, which enrich content and the intelligence of the social web, pulls in user profiles and identities, and must be combined for Web 3.0 to work.
Conclusion
Nova Spivack's Twine is one of the first online services to use Web 3.0 technologies. Its goal is to organize, share and discover information about a user's interests in networks of like-minded people. Using semantic technologies, and powered by semantic understanding, Twine automatically organizes information, learns about users' specific interests and makes recommendations. The more users use Twine, the better the service gets to know its users and the more useful it becomes. Twine is an example of Web 3.0 at work, combining the social elements of Web 2.0 with user-specific Semantic Web tools.
Cloud Computing; The Past, The Present, The Future
WindowSecurity.com Article | 07.22.09 | By Ricky M. Magalhaes
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Introduction
In this article we will cover the elements that a company needs to consider when evaluating a cloud service. Cloud solutions have matured and are not as new as they seem. I remember in 1999 when I was involved in building a fully hosted Microsoft environment for business's and was faced with the obstacle of not having enough bandwidth in the market segment I was involved with at the time. This is a distant memory and bandwidth has become an available technology the world over. As the economy has taken a downturn and costs, budgets and jobs are being cut, more options have become available that weren't properly considered in the time of boom.
Why is the cloud so cloudy?
There are so many interpretations of cloud that it is confusing to the consumer. There is true cloud, part cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud and many other such references. Not to forget SaaS or (Software as a Service) mostly delivered over the cloud or private cloud. In summary, the word "cloud" to me refers to something over an internet or public network. For this reason, more security is required and this has seen the rise of VPN type technology like SSL VPN and other remote working solutions i.e. Terminal services and Citrix.
The past
In the past barriers like bandwidth, perception, loss of control, trust and feasibility all played a role in reasons for not considering a cloud service. Today most of these challenges have been overcome, or countermeasures are in place to resolve the challenges. Faster bandwidth, virtualization and more particular skills around cloud type technologies enhance the offering.
The present
In the present the downturn is shifting business perception of the cloud service and many companies both big and small are seriously considering, if not subscribing, to cloud services.
Job cuts
Millions of jobs worldwide have been cut over the past year, this influx of people into unemployment is particularly important to consider if you form part of the security team for your organization. Was the employees' account disabled? Was remote access revoked? Were all tokens disabled and handed in? Was the laptop returned and other such administrative policy related concerns taken into account? In a cloud service the centralization of security enables the security team to revoke access instantaneously.
More security is needed
"Desperate times call for desperate measures" was what the chief of cyber security advisor (UK) at Microsoft said. This translates to a response to the downturn in the economy some people might take more chances as their income is squeezed.
Pressure on staff
As a company grows, the IT infrastructure needs to show ROI (return on investment). The people paying the bills want to see efficiency and effectiveness of the solutions they pay so much money for. With resources already spread so thin it is difficult for the IT department to specialize in every single area and extract the full potential of the technology, especially those that are niche, like disk encryption, data loss prevention and other such like technical control areas that need consistent input and management. In these instances, cloud services make more sense and are often more cost effective and show more benefit. If a full analysis is performed most cloud services pay themselves off within the first 12 months and cost less to run in the long term. The real crunch is if the cloud solution is suited for your type of organization.
Benefits of Cloud solution
There are many benefits to a cloud solution, but these need to be weighed and understood before opting for a solution that is partially out of the IT departments control. Below we will cover some of the benefits, components and countermeasures that need to be understood before opting in.
Greener: Cloud solutions tend to be greener, as some of the infrastructure is co hosted and shared, some of the applications and solutions are fully virtualized and other design changes make the whole offering more efficient and thus greener. In the UK, if an enterprise hosts a typical exchange server, the electrical costs usually add up to over £500 per year. A collocated server with similar specification and computing power would cost less than half this in the cloud. Then there is the question of licensing. Typical vendor licensing cost can vary based on size of enterprise. In most cases, service providers have cumulative packages that make the full cloud subscription cheaper for the consumer as the service providers have better deals with vendors. In turn, the cloud delivered solution is much cheaper from a hosting and licensing perspective. The skills are also cumulative so the customer benefits from enhanced expert skill.
Most managed services are looked after by dedicated teams per solution. This means that the solution is built by specialists that focus on the particular technology. The outcome is that the offering is more streamlined and a service runs within the best practice guidelines of the vendor and industry. This would be markedly different compared to "home" or internally built enterprise solutions that cannot emulate the level of a cloud service.
Centralized: The centralized yet potentially decentralized management solution. This fully scalable and flexible cloud solution offers something that is difficult to achieve for most large enterprises. Compared to locally hosted applications a cloud solution would offer company flexibility and reach that any global business would envy. This is very compelling, and on many occasions, this feature can be the sole reason for an organization to move into the cloud.
Affordable: One of the important considerations to a cloud service is cost. Imagine having to pay for all the cell phone towers used every time you wanted to buy a mobile phone. This would mean that to use the infrastructure, an individual or enterprise would have to pay for the towers, the connectivity between them and all the other elements of the solution. This would make the cost prohibitive and most organizations would not consider this solution; however this is exactly what happened in the beginning of the cell phone service 15 years ago, and how the offering was funded. Today, the cost of mobile telephony has dropped and become affordable. Evidently, people now subscribe without a second thought and this is a fully managed, wireless “cloud” type service funded by subscription and the numbers.
Security
Security is always a concern, especially when running environments like windows that are so familiar the world over. Microsoft has a reasonable patch management solution but now in the cloud this effectively can be delivered in minutes rather than days.
In many cases, some organizations have the view that cloud solutions outsourcing and managed services are less secure. What the company is failing to recognize is that they are probably already using such services without consideration. Services like Blackberry, Messagelabs and other such services involve messages being sent to a third party, scanned then forwarded back into the organizations localized mail stream. This would undoubtedly change most people’s perspective as a well run cloud solution far outweighs the perception of insecurity and loss of control. In fact, in many cases the solution is to build better hardware, firmer controls and more efficient infrastructure at a lower cost.
The future
In the future, more cloud adoption is certain, this year alone the move to the cloud by many business has been phenomenal, so much so that some cloud business have grown by over 200%. Large vendors see this as the growing model for software and services in the future so more focus by the vendors is afforded. Do not be surprised if the cloud bursts with offerings over the next 24 months.
Summary
No matter what your organizational requirements are, you might find that cloud services make sense. If not a complete switch to a cloud service, possibly a partial hybrid switch might work. This is what Microsoft sees as the way forward, and thus, they have built their cloud solutions based on hybrid type offerings.
What’s With All the Fuss About HTML5?
Quirk Article | 07.27.10 | By Jean du Plessis
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What is HTML5?
HTML5 is the next version of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) which is the core markup language of pages on the World Wide Web.
The web has changed a lot in the last 13 years since HTML4 became a standard back in 1997 - the year Dolly the sheep was cloned and Titanic hit the movies. The rise of web applications (like Gmail and Google Docs) and the increasing use of rich media on the web has highlighted the gaping holes in the current specification to meet the need of modern day web sites and web applications.
The HTML5 specification was started by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) in June 2004 under the name Web Applications 1.0. It was later adopted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 2007 as the starting point of the work of the new HTML working group with Ian Hickson of Google, Inc. as the editor in charge of the HTML5 specification.
Currently in Working Draft stage, the specification is expected to reach the Candidate Recommendation stage during 2012 and finally become a W3C Recommendation in the year 2022 or later. This timeline has not stopped browser vendors from implementing many of the relatively stable sections of the specification in the latest version of their browsers.
What's New in HTML5?
Many of the enhancements to HTML5 won’t be visible to the end-user but to the developer it opens up a whole new world.
Many new tags have been added (like <nav>, <footer>, <article> etc.) that will allow a developer to mark up the page in a more semantic manner which in turn will allow search engines and screen readers to understand the context of the information better.
Multimedia functionality has also been added with the addition of the <video> and <audio> tags that will allow websites to play video and audio without requiring the user to have Flash or other plug-ins installed. Web forms have also received some love with the addition of more types (like email, telephone number etc.) and attributes.
Not only does HTML5 specify new markup, but it also adds a whole bunch of exciting scripting APIs. These new APIs provide functionality that enable developers to build feature rich and fast web applications previously only experienced in desktop applications. You can view this video of Remy Sharp presenting on the new JavaScript APIs.
Flash vs. HTML5 Canvas
One of the biggest talking points of HTML5 is the Canvas element. The Canvas element allows for dynamic, scriptable rendering of 2D shapes and images. 3D rendering capabilities are already in planning in the form of the WebGL standard currently being developed.
This functionality was previously only available by using Flash, but is now natively available in the browser via Canvas and it has been touted as the Flash 'killer'. Aiding in the increasing popularity of Canvas and the possible demise of Flash is Apple's refusal to allow Flash on the iPhone and iPad.
In what has been quite a heated public debate, Apple has stood firm on their decision and Steve Jobs released their (Apple's) thoughts on Flash. In the article Jobs allude to many of Flash's shortcomings like reliability, security and performance.
Adobe, makers of Flash authoring tools, are certainly not going out without a fight and will in a future release support exporting Flash animations to Canvas as was demonstrated in this video.
So When Can We Use It?
In a perfect world, we could already be using most of these new features of HTML5. That is if we didn't have to put up with Internet Explorer (IE). Most modern browsers (like Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari) support HTML5 in their latest versions, but IE is still lagging behind.
This does not mean you can't use it though. By implementing a progressive enhancement strategy you can enhance the standard functionality provided by your website or web application so that users of modern browsers can get a better experience. Libraries like Modernizr allow you to detect the functionality supported by a user’s browser and target them appropriately.
There does seem to be light at the end of the tunnel with the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 9. Microsoft has done a lot a catching up in this release and have included some of HTML5's new features including the Canvas tag. When users of older versions of Internet Explorer finally switch to Internet Explorer 9 or a better browser, we can expect to see HTML5 being implemented all over the web.
Quirk's Position on HTML5
Quirk is always on the lookout for new technologies that will allow us to craft smarter and more creative websites and web applications. We're excited about HTML5 and what it can do for the web. We believe it will provide a stepping stone that will see a more interactive and rich experience for the user on the web.
To make sure we are at the cutting edge of these enhancements to HTML, we've already started implementing it in our internal web projects so that when HTML5 goes mainstream Quirk will be ready to provide our customers the latest and greatest that the web has to offer them.
HTML5 in Action
I am sure you would like to see some HTML5 in action, so here's a small collection of demos showcasing some HTML5 functionality:
The Future of RSS
ReadWriteWeb.com Article | 04.03.07 | By Alex Iskold
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There is little doubt that RSS is a disruptive, game-changing technology. The so called Really Simple Syndication (previously also called Rich Site Summary and RDF Site Summary), has powered a fundamentally new way to deliver and consume web content. Before RSS, users had to visit individual web sites to find out what was new. Today, news is delivered via RSS directly to web browsers, desktops and aggregators. With RSS, the dynamics of the web changed into an on-demand medium.
RSS usage has since spread beyond simple news delivery. Companies like de.licio.us, Flickr and YouTube added another dimension to RSS - i.e. they made it an integral part of the Social Web (social networking, photos, video, etc). Also Google built Google Base, its Craigslist competitor, entirely on RSS. Other companies too are beginning to extend RSS, sometimes with proprietary extensions.
In short, because of RSS ubiquity it is now a very attractive delivery medium for all kinds of content. However because the basic format is simple and primitive, there is no way to encode semantics without building an extension. So in this post, we look at RSS today and ask if RSS is evolving into a tool for delivering complex, semantically rich information.
Brief History of RSS
RSS is an XML-based language and its early roots can be traced to back to 1995, to Apple Labs and then slightly later to Netscape, Userland Software and Microsoft. The first major use of RSS was in 1999 when it was integrated into the My Netscape portal. So RSS is not a new kid on the block, in fact it was around way before the new Social Web came about. So why did it not take off earlier? It appears to have been misunderstood and de-emphasized by AOL, and was downplayed after the Netscape acquisition.
RSS survived mainly because of one man's heavy-lifting - Dave Winer. Dave authored RSS 0.91, RSS 0.92 and then the widely used RSS 2.0 specification. Over the years he has drummed the beat of RSS on his blog and every corner of the web, until it got adopted by companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo.
[Ed: there were also heated format wars during this time, with RSS 1.0 and then ATOM, but we won't re-hash those here!]
RSS in a Nutshell
RSS is rather simple language to describe the latest headlines (or the full content of articles). The following explanation of RSS is based on the RSS 2.0 format, but other formats are similar. Here is a sample of what it looks like:
Each RSS file consists of items delivered in a single channel. Each item has a title, a link and a description (attributes). The on-demand aspect of RSS is enabled by two timestamps - the lastBuildDate in the channel indicates the last time this channel changed, while the pubDate of the item indicates when the item was published. RSS aggregators (a.k.a. RSS readers) take advantage of these timestamps to decide when new content is available.
The old web was a pure pull medium, because users had to visit each web site in order to find out what (if anything) had changed. However, businesses and advertisers in particular love push technologies - where content is delivered to the user when it becomes available. RSS is an interesting mix between the two extremes, neither of which could actually work in our information-overloaded and advertising-saturated world. RSS is basically a filtered push - the user subscribes (pulls in) to channels that he/she likes, and after that content is delivered automatically.
RSS - Beyond the Distribution Medium
So today RSS is a great distribution medium. Why? Because it has become ubiquitous. If you are an online business with customers and you do not utilize RSS, then you are simply missing out. Smart companies are leveraging blogs, photos, video, podcasts to stay in touch with customers daily. Other services, like del.icio.us (owned by Yahoo), allow users to publish and subscribe to feeds, enabling powerful social networks outside the website.
The ubiquity of RSS is so powerful that publishers want to deliver more and more content to users via RSS. But the problem is that basic RSS cannot be used to deliver structured information.
Lets look at a specific example. Suppose your bank wants to deliver you statements in RSS instead of email. However if you use RSS as it is today, then the bank statements would need to be encoded in HTML - meaning no financial application would be able to manipulate the data. When your Quicken software connects to the bank, the information gets downloaded in a structured format. But with RSS, it is simply not possible currently - because there is no way to describe bank transactions using standard RSS.
Why this matters
At first glance this might not make much sense. Why do we care about RSS having structure? Because structured RSS holds the promise of
information portability. Going back to the bank statement example, it would be great if the statement also can be taken as an input by a financial application of your choice. Since we are moving our desktops online - e.g. the trend of Web Office suites - the formats that we used in the Windows age are not going to work well. We need something lighter and more portable to carry our information around - hence XML and RSS.
Note that businesses are probably the most interested party here, because to a business a loss of structure leads to loss of meaning, loss of trail and ultimately the loss of customers.
Extending RSS
To extend RSS basically means to add a custom tag. For example, Google Base currently has 148 attributes that it recommends to add to RSS. Here are some examples starting with the letter 'a': age, actor, agent, apparel type, artist. These are everyday concepts that might come handy in classifieds and other aspects of life. All of these tags allow Google Base to make RSS structured, whilst preserving its basic capability.
Similarly, FeedBurner inserts proprietary attributes into their RSS feeds. This is done purely for house keeping purposes, because only FeedBurner's engine is meant to process these attributes.
The main problem with extending RSS is agreeing on what things mean. In the case of FeedBurner it is not critical, but in the case of Google Base it is much more important. In order for RSS extensions to work, the second piece of the old technology dilemma needs to be solved. There needs to be a common format for communicating data between applications:
Conclusion
Purists, myself included, would argue that using RSS for the delivery of complex content is a hack. After all, what does a news format have to do with semantics? But technologies do not evolve in a pure way. Some things catch on and succeed, and become widely adopted. The fact is that RSS is becoming a pervasive on-demand technology, which outweighs the fact that it was never meant to be the semantic agent of the web. But even from a purist's perspective, there may not be much to pick at - RSS is just another XML-language and in that respect it is as good as any other flavor of XML.
So will RSS become more than it is today? Will it be able to solve the second piece of the old technology industry puzzle - the common format? As usual, only time will tell. However RSS does look like a strong front runner at this point, as we do not have a lot of attractive, simple and widespread alternatives. But again, who knows, technology is not a predictable thing.
Do you think RSS will expand beyond what it is today? What real world things are you are seeing that hint at RSS being used in more ways?
B2Bi and Web Services
Netways Article | 03.2003 | Issue by eNews Edition 6 Issue 20
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This article discusses the fundamentals of Business to Business Integration (B2Bi), the need for companies to integrate their systems, the challenges of B2Bi, the usefulness of Web Services in B2Bi, and limitations in the current state of Web Services for their usage in B2Bi.
What is B2B Integration (B2Bi)?
B2B integration or B2Bi is basically about the secured coordination of information among businesses and their information systems. It promises to dramatically transform the way business is conducted between partners, suppliers and customers or buyers. All companies (large, medium, small, or new) can experience increased growth and success through tightly integrated partnerships.
Companies, from across a variety of industries, are embracing B2Bi and realizing the enormous competitive advantage it provides, through faster time to market, reduced cycle times, and increased customer service. Through integration of business and technical processes, companies are able to strengthen relationships with partners and customers, achieve seamless integration inside and outside the enterprise, gain real-time views of customer accounts, increase operational efficiencies, and reduce costs.
The market for B2Bi is huge. According to a recent report published in the post dot com crash era from the International Data Corporation group, by 2005 B2B e-commerce will be of the order 4.7 trillion US Dollars approximately. B2B integration is expected to yield productivity gains of over a trillion USD by 2010.
An Intimidating Task
B2Bi is easier said than done - it is indeed a daunting effort. Integration is a big challenge, especially for global corporations that have hundreds to thousands of trading partners. It is an extremely daunting effort to manage the integration of so many business processes and can turn out to be a time consuming, complex, and expensive task. With the advent of new technologies, the potential for disparity further increases and makes the exchange of electronic information even more complicated.
Essential Features of a B2B Integration Solution
Without the right selection of B2Bi solution(s) that meet your business and technical requirements, any integration implementation will be doomed. Before a company selects any B2Bi solution, it has to consider the following:
- Can the solution evolve with the company, with the industry, and with the IT industry?
- Does it offer comprehensive functionality with the flexibility to support third-party software vendors, and connect existing and new systems in a common framework?
- Does it work within scalable environments to accommodate customer and trading partner systems as well?
- Does it support open standards?
So, what are the key features that a company should look for before investing in any B2Bi software solution?
Firstly, the integration solution should be able to enable any transaction, any time - end-to-end and partner-to-partner. It should be able to fully automate real-time exchange of data between disparate applications.
Secondly, the solution should be able to conduct all transactions securely, maintain audit logs, etc.
Thirdly, the solution should support diverse sets of file formats, protocols, and security standards.
Fourthly, the solution should be based on open standards that allow a company and its partners to send transactions using any combination of applications and file formats, telecommunication pathways, communication protocols and B2B protocols, and XML standards such as RosettaNet, ebXML, OAG, Biztalk, OBI, etc. The solution should also provide support for Web Services.
Lastly, the solution should be scalable, that is, companies should be able to scale it horizontally and vertically. Further, it should offer robust load balancing features, critical to the success of large applications.
A few leading B2Bi solutions include: IBM MQSeries Integrator; Extricity; BEA eLink; webMethods B2B Enterprise; NEON eBusiness Integration Servers; Vitria BusinessWare; and Microsoft BizTalk Server.
The Role of Extensible Markup Language (XML) in B2Bi
XML has become the lingua franca of the B2B e-business revolution. It has created a mechanism to publish, share, and exchange data using open standards over the Internet. There is no doubt that in the future XML will be used in each and every B2B application.
XML is not, however, an integration solution in itself - it is just a data definition language. Without global XML standards there can be no seamless business among companies spread out all over the world. These standards are a common set of industry-specific definitions representing business processes. For XML messages to be interpreted by all companies participating in B2Bi they need to agree on a common XML-based B2B standard, which will define the document formats, allowable information, and process descriptions.
The need for industry-wide B2B e-commerce standards in vertical industries is becoming increasingly critical and obvious. Several organizations have been working to define these market-segment-specific definitions. Standards and groups such as RosettaNet, CIDX, and OASIS are making it possible for companies to share information with one another without having to completely reengineer their internal applications. These standards will automate the flow of information across all companies within a given industry, independent of the underlying software or hardware infrastructure supporting the activities related to these transactions.
Web Services and B2Bi
Web Services, which are based on XML standards, are a boon to the world of B2B, as we discussed in the previous section that XML-based standards hold the key for the success of dynamic B2Bi and its wide spread adoption by companies of all sizes. Web Services are based on the following open standards: Web Services Description Language (WSDL - to describe), Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI - to advertise and syndicate), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP - to communicate) and Web Services Flow Language (WSFL - to define work flows).
Thus, Web Services use SOAP based messages to achieve dynamic integration between two disparate applications. Companies use WSDL, a Web Services standard, to describe their public and private Web Services and publish their Web Services either to a private or public repository and directory using UDDI.
Essential Features of B2B Applications and Web Services
Let's discuss how Web Services fit in with some of the essential traits of B2B applications.
Distributed Transaction Management
It is very tough to maintain distributed transaction control even within disparate systems and applications within an enterprise. B2B transactions may be spread over disparate systems and applications across different enterprises, making them several times more difficult difficult to maintain and control.
In their current state, Web Services are not transactional in nature and provide basic "request/response" functionality.
Security
B2Bi requires two levels of security. Firstly, B2Bi necessitates opening up corporate firewalls to enable cross boundary communication between enterprises. Thus, whatever mode of integration is used, companies have to secure their internal network against malicious attacks through these open ports.
Secondly, the data transmitted over dedicated leased lines, such as EDI, Internet, or any other mode, has to be secured. The data may contain classified information, such as corporate information and business transaction information, and thus cannot be left unguarded.
In their current state, Web Services lack broad support and facilities for security. Thus, Web Services based B2Bi architecture may potentially have big security loopholes.
Dynamic
For companies to participate in true dynamic business with other companies, integration between the systems of the two companies has to happen in real-time. Further, this integration is only possible if B2Bi is done using open standards over the Internet.
Web Services do provide a dynamic approach to integration by offering dynamic interfaces. Web Services are based on open standards such as UDDI, SOAP, and HTTP, and this is probably the single most important factor that would lead to the wide adoption of Web Services for B2Bi.
Integration Mode
The integration mode or pattern is the most important element of B2B integration. Is the B2Bi data-, business process-, application-, function-, or portal-oriented? The answer to this question determines a lot of answers involved in the modalities and technology used for B2Bi. Typically in B2B integration, companies involved take a joint decision based on the technology available in-house, budgets, and level of synchronization needed to support business functionalities.
In this generation of Web Services, it is possible to achieve only function level integration between applications (for details on the difference between function level integration using API or RPC and Web Services, please refer to my previous article Enterprise Application Integration and Web Services).
The next generation of Web Services, however, will be functionally and technologically advanced, offering user interface encapsulation and security. They will be able to package an application and embed it into another application.
Example of Web Services for B2Bi
The following diagram shows an example of using Web Services in a B2Bi scenario. In this example, the corporate procurement application running within an application server requests quotes from multiple vendors. The procurement application of the buyer gets information about Web Services offered by suppliers using a private UDDI registry and invokes these services over the Internet to get quotes for a specific item.
The sequence of steps is as follows:
- The Buyer's procurement application, running within an application server, has to generate a purchase order for a specific item.
- The procurement application gets information about Web Services of different suppliers for that specific item by doing a look up in the private UDDI registry.
- The location of and WSDL binding information for the Web Services is sent to the procurement application.
- The application invokes the Web Services published by the suppliers to get quotes for that item. The communication is based on SOAP over the Internet.
- The application receives quotes from different suppliers. The communication is based on SOAP over the Internet.
- The information is then analyzed, leading to the creation of the purchase order.
Conclusion
Web Services certainly have the potential of redefining the whole paradigm of B2B integration by making it truly dynamic, easily implemented in a modular fashion, and in the longer run being cheaper. The application of Web Services for B2Bi, however, will be limited if services for authentication, encryption, access control, and data integrity are not available. Web Services intermediaries that provide services such as UDDI repository hosting, security services, quality assurance of Web Services, performance checks, etc., will have a big role to play in the B2Bi space.
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