Semantics-based Integration Tools Find Meaning in Data
The End of Middleware?
While everyone waits for the Semantic Web to arrive, current semantics-based integration tools are destined to become increasingly powerful and capable. Combined with Web services applications, the technology could doom middleware as it’s currently known. "If the concept of semantics-based integration takes off, Web services, as well as standards like RosettaNet, will evolve and adapt the concept into their approaches to integration," says AMR Research’s Austvold. Adds Venkata: "The limitations that exist today on Web services-based interactions will go away."
Such a development would lead to one of technology’s Holy Grails: universally compatible data. "It would mean the elimination of application-specific knowledge needed to integrate enterprise applications together," says Austvold.
That day isn’t here yet. But if semantics-based integration tools live up to their promise, it soon will be.
