In an earlier posting (ok, very early, i.e. very old posting) I had talked about our vision of Web 2.0 being built on an Info 2.0 fabric. And that I would be giving a keynote on this at the VLDB 2006 conference. I did that, the paper version of which can be found here. My central thesis was that databases had revolutionized enterprise IT architectures in the 80's, and in the current SOA world, similar separation of process and information is beginning to take place (through new capabilities such as IBM's Information Server), and that a similar transformation for Web 2.0 applications can and will happen around an information layer that I had called Info 2.0.
Since then, we have seen offerings such as Yahoo! Pipes, Snap Logic, Open Kapow, Dapper, Dabble DB that are all beginning to stake claims to an Info 2.0 layer -- fundamentally, either converting web data into feeds, or providing primitives to combine, mix and match feeds,so that Web 2.0 applications can leave some of the heavy data/content/information processing layer to these software or SaaS offerings, and focus instead on their core capabilities. Of course, with such a layer, any application, not just something that would qualify to be a Web 2.0 application, would benefit. This is very exciting. Rumor has it that Microsoft is also working on its mashup fabric.
So what are we doing about it? Of course, if I am talking, we must be doing something about it :) IBM and I will talk more about it as it develops, but fundamentally, our focus will be to enable enterprise (LOB and IT) users to mix and match their IT, external and departmental information in the Info 2.0 layer. You might have already heard of our QEDWiki offering, which is about quick assembly of mashup and other Web 2.0 apps. The Info 2.0 layer will feed into QEDWiki and other app building tools, to provide the right data elements into the application. We continue to expand on the information models (thinking of it as Atom feed is too restrictive -- a generalized XML stream with some subset of XQuery operations on it is a better model), the set of operators to mix and match and cleanse and standardize and join and fuse these feeds (including the use of search driven join operators), as well as connections to information services inside and outside the enterprise. I think over time, since this is about "quick" assembly of information, the more the layer operates on a "do what i mean" as opposed to "do what i say" principle (i.e. depend on implicit or explicit semantics) the better off this layer will be. More later, I promise...
Anant, I like Info 2.0. It will be interesting to see how the Enterprise picks up on these ideas.
Posted by: Chris Marino | May 03, 2007 at 01:22 PM
Kinda mized up right now. But if you are aware enough yo'll do goo with it.
Posted by: sap bpc consulting | February 01, 2011 at 11:16 PM