Tuesday, April 25, 2006

11:45 am - 12:45 pm

Level: Introductory

An increasingly competitive and regulated global economy demands a level of business data semantics that may be unobtainable using today's technology stack. The W3C has proposed a radically new approach to information management based on the RDF and OWL standards. Can the nascent Semantic Web technologies solve these problems and how does today's IT practitioner bridge the gap from 20 century unit record processing to a truly semantically rich information processing world? For "mainstream" IT professionals this will be a process of discovery akin to the emergence of relational and distributed computing 25 years ago. This session will explore the following topics:

• Understanding the metadata disconnect and how it impacts everything you do in IT today
• Comparing today's technology stack to the emerging world of semantics
• Look at possible evolution paths as semantic technologies make their way into IT ecosystem
• Three Starting Points for applying Semantic Technologies: Content Management; Master Data Management; and MetaData Management

John Singer is currently working as a Data Architect for MasterCard International supporting metadata management and content management efforts. John has 25 years of management and hands on experience in Data Administration and Database Administration in a variety of industries. John has worked as an industry analyst for MetaGroup and also teaches seminars and graduate level college course on various IT topics.