Semantic Modeling for Data

Chapter 15. Looking Ahead

It’s supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to push this button.

John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar

And so, here we are. You have walked with me on a journey in the world of data semantics, examining many of the quirks and challenges that make it a difficult yet worthwhile world to be part of and work in. Along the way, I hope that you’ve learned a few tricks that can help you avoid critical pitfalls and break key dilemmas that may otherwise prevent you from building and using high-quality and valuable semantic representations of data.

In this last chapter, I would like to bring together some of the recurring themes of this book, and build on them to envisage the future.

The Map Is Not the Territory

The main reason why I have structured the book around pitfalls and dilemmas and haven’t given you a set of recipes for building the perfect semantic model is that I have no idea what such a model looks like for your domain, data, and application context. In other words, my map does not necessarily reflect your territory.

Unless we sit together and do all the work I described in Chapter 11 to craft a tailored strategy for your semantic model and its context, my telling you that you should use one modeling language instead of another, or optimize one quality dimension at the expense of another, is not only ineffective but also irresponsible. Instead, I have chosen to tell you what potential dangers your context might contain and how to avoid them, and ...