“NoSQL” has been thrown around a lot lately, but what exactly does it mean? It is a generic term that describes any data management system that does not use SQL as a query interface. Early on the positioning was much more aggressive, but more recently this has been softened so now NoSQL is commonly quoted as meaning of “Not only SQL”; in other words, one of many tools.
Accenture is deploying its digital diagnostics engine, which scans websites to identify performance problems and structural deficiencies, into the Windows Azure platform. This news was announced at the third annual Microsoft 2010 Asia High Tech Summit in Tokyo.
Yahoo's BOSS platform lets external developers build custom search engines on top of the company's search infrastructure and the latest news is it will shift to a fee-based model in early 2011. In its new version, BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) will also give developers various options to generate revenue.
Solid ontologies are important in every use, however when dealing with medical records and medical care, it takes on a whole new level of importance. Project HealthDesign is a good example. It is a project that capitalizes on advancements in information technology to investigate how soliciting patients’ observations of daily living could improve care for chronic illnesses.
Reaching across the waters, the French national library BNF has chosen Microsoft’s Bing to improve access to the 1.25 million documents on the Gallica digital library. It covers works that are in the public domain.
With the term "ontology" being heard more often in data management forums and discussions, it is no surprise to see it as the topic of Malcolm Chisholm’s latest post on Expert Channel. Despite the frequency of the term’s use, it is not easy to find out precisely what it means and what significance it might have for the data management community. Is it just a buzzword for marketing purposes or is it real?
iProgrammer reviews the book Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies by Pascal Hitzler, Markus Krötzsch & Sebastian Rudolph. The reviewer points out that the book is an academic book and though very approachable, will deliver what you would expect from an academic book.
Hadoop began as a tool for indexing Web pages, now the open source framework is being marketed as a tool that could house and analyze vast amounts of data with the kind of proportions that would quickly overwhelm traditional database systems and data warehouses.