Module 4 - Annotation

Summary:

The Web has made huge amounts of information available to society and has been a technological leap in communication and data storage, retrieval and display. Even so, storage and retrieval of data has depended on the ability of search software to find data stored in structured formats (schema) that allow it to be recognized as legitimate data and contain a complete set of attributes before it can be retrieved.

Creating suitable applications to perform these “relational” tasks means the development of software features that are not constrained to select data that has been stored using a predetermined schema. This software needs to be “agile” enough to collect data, store and retrieve it in a format that responds to its quality and quantity and can evolve as more data is changed or added.

The relational data base relies on the primary key to link related data from different tables and it will not retrieve and display that data if the primary key is missing or different. The Semantic Web, however, has the potential to retrieve data from unrelated databases which therefore requires a more flexible alternative to the traditional notion of the primary key.

SPARQL is a Web 2 software which is an extension of the Web search software that can operate with the existing Web data storage structure whilst accessing the Semantic Web data. In the example of a database, the Semantic Web has access to information which reaches across the data defined in a table.

The ability of this type of software to form relationships with data outside of one database table with data in another database will create “one huge database” and make the next evolutionary leap in data storage and retrieval.

Preference:

1. The information describing the article was an introduction to a number of articles on the same topic as the Semantic Web and not directly attributable to the content of the researched article. Therefore, although the summary was relevant to the Semantic Web, the article by Andrew Newman was specific to describing a type of software with the capability of searching and interacting in the Semantic Web environment. There is some technical information which, although very detailed, was not helpful to the conceptual discussion that I was looking for.

The annotation which I have written is a summary of this particular article and provides a description which would give me a more informed and preferable version of the article.

2. External users would prefer to use the information in the annotation that I have written. It would take longer to read than the “snapshot” on the original source but it would save time to read a description that provided the key elements of the article rather than a general summary of the articles located at this site.

1. 
   

Newman, Andrew, “A Relational View of the Semantic Web”. March 14^th, 2007. Retrieved from: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2007/03/14/a-relational-view-of-the-semantic-web.html