Preface


This book is intended for people involved with computer software in businesses or other enterprises. I've aimed it at decision makers who are interested in staying on the leading edge as trends develop, but I think there is something here for just about anyone who deals with business software.

Perhaps you picked this book up because, like me, you have been hearing the term semantics more and more often in the context of computer systems. You may have noticed that, in most cases, as soon as the term comes up the speaker or author changes the subject: "The rest of the issues are all semantic. Moving on then to"

From the tone and the context it seems as if the speaker is implying one of two things: either "I'm here to talk about a technical problem, and once we get down to the semantics, it's someone else's problem" or "I don't want to get into this, because this is where it really gets complicated." Or both.

I've been applying the study of semantics to software applications for 10 years. In 1992, unsatisfied with the prevailing wisdom regarding object-oriented design, I set off to find something that would be more helpful in guiding our project efforts. What I found initially were a couple of inspiring articles on semantic modeling: one by Richard Hull and Roger King,[1] the other by Michael Hammer and Dennis McLeod.[2] We adopted their philosophies, their approaches, and some of their diagramming techniques, and we applied them to our design work for the rest of the 1990s. We had many enlightened breakthroughs pursuing these methods, culminating in the development of what we believe to be the first purely model-driven application architecture.[3]

We had enjoyed a reasonable degree of success applying the insights that we gleaned from looking at the problems from a semantic point of view. However, the truth is that any success we had was quite haphazard. We had no methodology, no school of thought, no framework to guide our way. So in mid-2000, when venture money for product development vanished, we became consultants.

Our aim was, and is, to take what we'd learned by doing, and convert it into approaches, methods, and frameworks that our clients could use to discover and exploit the rich semantic bounty to which they are heirs. This book is one of the products of that change in emphasis. Four of the hottest areas in information systems have a semantic core: business rules, enterprise application integration, Web Services, and of course the Semantic Web.

We believe that semantics is going to become a core competency for information systems professionals in the not too distant future. We also believe that it is not primarily a technology issue, even though there are some complex technologies involved. It is a philosophy layered on top of domain knowledge, applied via technology.

This book was written for managers and advisors who have a high degree of technical aptitude. It does not require much prior knowledge in any of the specific disciplines that we examine, but a general understanding and appreciation of the nature of systems problems in medium- to large-scale enterprises would be helpful. Although the intended audience is at least partially managerial, you'll notice that I did not "dumb it down." I've tried to make things as simple as I can, but at some point we have to connect the dots between the conceptual complexity of the problems to be solved and the implementation complexity of the tools we have at our disposal. I hope I have found a balance that works for a majority of this audience.

In the year since I began this book project I have read dozens of books and nearly a thousand articles and Web sites on topics related to the theme of this book. There is a problem with this type of research. Rather than becoming enlightened, I've merely discovered whole disciplines in which I'm just a beginner. The breadth of my ignorance has expanded manifold. This subject is vast. Perhaps it cannot be mastered in its entirety. What I hope I do here is lay out a framework, where we can see which aspects of the disciplines related to semantics come to bear on what topics in the realm of information systems. I think it helps to see how things fit in the bigger picture. For those who wish to pursue some aspect of this further, the appendixes provide a jumping off point for your continued study.

Conventions

When I use the word "we" in this book I usually mean the team I was working with at the time, or currently, because very little of this is solely the product of my efforts.

The code examples in the book are simplified versions of actual code. In most cases the extra syntax or statements that would be needed to make the code executable would distract from the readability and the point I was trying to make, so I omitted them.

[1]Richard Hull, Roger King, "A Tutorial on Semantic Database Modeling," ACM Computer Surveys, Sept 1987, pp 201–260.

[2]Michael Hammer, Dennis McLeod, "Database Description with SDM: A Semantic Database Model," ACM Transactions on Database Systems, Sept 1981, pp 351–386.

[3]See http://www.velocity.com and http://www.instancia.com and U.S. patent numbers 6,006,224 and 6,049,673 for further information.




Semantics in Business Systems(c) The Savvy Manager's Guide
Semantics in Business Systems: The Savvy Managers Guide (The Savvy Managers Guides)
ISBN: 1558609172
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 184
Authors: Dave McComb

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