Adaptive Information Improving Business Through Semantic Interoperability, Grid Computing, and Enterprise Integration

Chapter 5. Semantic Conflict Solution Patterns

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• To understand something new, it must connect with something known.

• Semantic conflict, among data and schema, is the most significant barrier to fully realizing automated and adaptive system-to-system interoperability.

• Semantic conflicts are an inherent aspect of system interoperability—they cannot be prevented, only handled in a more efficient manner.

• Four key patterns of semantic conflict solutions exist: machine learning, third-party reference, model-based mapping, and inference.

Chapter 4 was a look at the foundation of semantics from its history, its multiple definitions, and its role in information technology. In this chapter, we continue by examining the ways that semantics can clash (semantic conflicts), how semantics can be resolved without custom code (solution patterns), and how semantics are typically constrained (context).

FINDING SEMANTICS IN ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE

Sometimes it can be easy to drown in all the terminology, concepts, and technicalities of a discussion about semantics. Once a simple understanding of data semantics has been reached, everything starts to look like a nail ready to be pounded down by the semantic interoperability hammer. Uses for semantic computing are indeed everywhere. Usually the trouble is just figuring out where to start.

One reason that this book is focused narrowly on the interoperability challenge is because of the vastness of reach that semantics can have—a single book on the subject ...