Semantic technology has been around for awhile, but is still finding its place among the technology world. Semantic technology uses formal semantics to give meaning to the disparate and raw data that surrounds us. Forbes brought this interesting topic to our attention in their article, “The Semantic Zoo – Smart Data Hubs, Knowledge Graphs and Data Catalogs.”
Semantic technology, together with linked data technology, as envisioned by the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, builds relationships between data in various formats and sources, from one string to another, helping build context and creating links out of these relationships.
The groundwork for semantics was laid down in the late 1990s and early 2000s and was seen by many as the movement’s birth. Yet many early participants in the field of semantics realized that computer systems were too slow to handle the intense indexing requirements the technology needed. In addition, the original specifications and APIs failed to handle important edge cases and the number of real world use cases where semantics made sense were simply not at a large enough scope.
Now, artificial intelligence (AI) has entered the scene and added to the challenge, along with the hurdle of governing data in a world of unstructured data.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
