Oracle and Its Semantic Technologies Center
April 7, 2010
In the course of a research project for a client, we came across the Oracle Semantic Technologies Center. We had heard that Oracle had some testing underway with Siderean Software (now in hiatus) in the semantic technology field. According to Oracle:
Oracle Spatial 11g introduces the industry’s first open, scalable, secure and reliable RDF management platform. Based on a graph data model, RDF triples are persisted, indexed and queried, similar to other object-relational data types. The Oracle 11g RDF database ensures that application developers benefit from the scalability of Oracle 11g to deploy scalable and secure semantic applications.
There are links to a life sciences “platform” which offers a presentational, some white papers, and product brochures. One of the more interesting documents explains the Oracle “platform”. You can download the presentation (validated on April 6, 2010) here. The system includes references to known technologies like table spaces and to some methods that seem to be getting long in the tooth, for example, hand crafted rules for Oracle streams. The presentation has a date of 2006, which makes me wonder if Oracle has pulled resources from this initiative. The presentation includes information about Oracle Secure Enterprise Search, another product about which we wonder about Oracle’s investment and commitment. The information about vast quantities of data does not include information about the hardware scaling products based on Sun Microsystems’ technologies. Despite its 2006 date, the presentation is quite complete and is an excellent yardstick against which to measure the more up to date information about Oracle. Despite the marketing, Oracle’s platform strikes us as mostly unchanged in the last few years. Your view may differ, of course.
The semantic splash page does provide links to information about Oracle 11g. The September 2009 write up “Oracle Semantic Technologies Inference Best Practices with RDFS/OWL” focuses on system performance. The white paper begs the question, “If the performance referenced in this white paper is as stated, why does an Oracle customer need the new generation of Exadata Storage Servers?”
After working through the information available from the Semantic Technologies Center, I formed an impression of broad marketing statements and specific detail about the performance of the Oracle systems. What seemed to be missing were updates to some critical documents and an way to figure out how the many moving parts fit together to solve a specific semantic problem.
Worth bookmarking if you are working with Oracle search or semantic systems, however.
Stephen E Arnold, April 7, 2010
No one paid us to write this article.
Splunk and Real Time Search
April 6, 2010
My column for Information World Review addressed the issue of latency in what marketers call real-time search. I am not sure when the article goes on the Information World Review Web site at http://www.iwr.co.uk/, but I can hit the three points in the write up.
- Real time means different things in different contexts
- The services which return results with less latency are specialist vendors such as Collecta, Surchur, and Twitter, among others.
- The real time results in the Big Three’s search systems are uniformly disappointing.
When I read “Splunk Goes Real-Time, Eliminates Latency from IT Data Search,” I wondered what I missed. After working through the write up, I realized that “real time search” was not defined. The assumption that a buzzword makes sense to a casual reader like myself is a common practice.
The write up said:
With a major upgrade, Splunk eliminates the latency by opening the doors to real-time search, analysis and monitoring for live streaming data. The company offered a glimpse by allowing me to go into the site and conduct a random search so that I could see my own search appear in real-time data, just as an IT admin might see it.
Splunk is company that specializes in log management. Logs are important for such applications as search engine optimization and certain security-related tasks. Here’s how the company describes itself:
Splunk is software that provides unique visibility across your entire IT infrastructure from one place in real time. Only Splunk enables you to search, report, monitor and analyze streaming and historical data from any source. Now troubleshoot application problems and investigate security incidents in minutes instead of hours or days, monitor to avoid service degradation or outages, deliver compliance at lower cost and gain new business insights from your IT data.
The addition of a search function that indexes in real time is a potentially big improvement over traditional log file analysis. The system includes a function to post Splunk saved search results to Twitter. You can get the script here.
The ZDNet write up includes a diagram for “Machine-Generated IT Data Contains a Categorical Record of Activity and Behavior”.
Splunk is a low latency search system that indexes certain types of content. “Real time” is a murky concept, and in my experience, every system exhibits latency to some degree.
Stephen E Arnold, April 6, 2010
This is an unsponsored post.
Cognition Technologies Added to Overflight
April 6, 2010
We received a clipping about Cognition Technologies’ beefing up its management team.
Stephen J. Lief will assume responsibility for Cognition’s legal eDiscovery business. According the the Cognition announcement of dBusinessNews, “His role is to expand the company’s growth by developing partnerships with eDiscovery vendors, law firms and enterprise legal departments.” One interesting aspect of his background is that he has served as the founding editor of a number of publications, including the Legal Tech Newsletter.
Cognition develops semantic / natural language processing technology. The company describes itself this way:
Cognition’s Semantic NLP, the Company’s patented linguistic meaning-based text processing technology, is able to simultaneously deliver significantly higher levels of precision and recall than is possible with currently used NLP and Search technologies….Unlike all of the popular text reading and search in use today which utilize mathematically-based pattern-matching technology (i.e. they search for a particular word pattern based upon the user query), Cognition’s Semantic NLP understands the meaning within the context of the text it is processing. Therefore, the end benefit delivered to Cognition’s clients is simultaneously more precise and relevant understanding of their customers’ actions and intent.
Here at the goose pond, there has been an uptick in questions about semantic search. We have added Cognition to our Overflight service.
Stephen E Arnold, April 6, 2010
This is a freebie.
SoftPerfect Research Offers Free Search Engine
April 2, 2010
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to the SoftPerfect Intranet Search engine. We have not put the software through its paces yet, but I wanted to document the location of the software and jot down some basic information. You can download the system from this link.
The company says: The system is
a self-contained index-based network search engine that indexes all files in your local area network and provides users with the ability to locate necessary files within a few seconds. It returns blazingly fast search results to your users, even when large numbers of shared files and folders are present.
The system operates through a browser. Its features include the ability to:
- Index available shared folders on the network or just those that you select.
- Use its own built-in high-speed searchable database.
- Be configured via an administration console.
- Schedule crawl modes.
- Built-in database- and web-server with ability to use third party web-server.
- Use either separate ISAPI or CGI Web-server modules
The system does not index file contents, which means that file names have to be darned clear.
Stephen E Arnold, April 2, 2010
No one paid us to write this article.
Mindbreeze Goes Mobile
April 2, 2010
Fabasoft has rolled out a new add-on to allow licensed users to search via a smartphone or other mobile device.
I spoke with Michael Hadrian, the managing director of Fabasoft Distribution in Linz, Austria. Fabasoft is the holding company of Mindbreeze enterprise search system. In that conversation, I picked up two interesting insights into the Fabasoft Mindbreeze push into the market for enterprise search.
Mindbreeze Enterprise Mobile result list.
First, the Mindbreeze search technology, recently profiled in a consultant’s report, is now available as a cloud-based service. The idea is to shift from an on-premises installation to one that Fabasoft / Mindbreeze can provision and operate from the cloud. Mr. Hadrian told me, “The major benefits are achieving business related results faster and reducing the burden on an organization’s internal information technology resources.”
Second, a Mindbreeze licensee gains access to the company’s mobile interface. The idea is that a worker, regardless of his / her location, can use the Fabasoft Mindbreeze products to locate information in a wide range of sources processed by the Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise system. These range from the standard Microsoft Office file types to more proprietary repositories such as those used by Lotus Domino / Notes customers.
A mobile search metadata display.
SSN Minute for April 1, 2010, Now Available
April 1, 2010
David Thimme, Strategic Social Networking, addresses the topic “Redrawing the Line for Employee Privacy.” The two minute video makes clear that there are some tough decisions and trade offs when social media are in use at an organization. You can access the video from the SSN Minute link or navigate directly to YouTube.com.
Stephen E Arnold, April 1, 2010
This is a sponsored post.
AIIM Report on Content Analytics
March 30, 2010
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link available from the Allyis Web site for the report “Content Analytics – Research Tools for Unstructured Content and Rich Media”. If you are trying to figure out what about 600 AIIM members think about the changing nature of information analysis, you will find this report useful. I flipped through the 20 pages of data from what strikes me as a somewhat biased sample of enterprise professionals. Your mileage may vary, of course. One quick example. In Figure 4: How would you rate your ability to research across the following content types on page 7, the respondants’ data are pretty good at search customer support logs. The respondents are also confident of their ability to search “case files” and “litigation and legal reports.” My research suggests that these three areas are real problems in most organizations. I am not sure how this sample interprets their organizations’ capabilities, but I think something is wacky. How can, for example, a general business employee assess the ease with which litigation content can be researched. Lawyers are the folks who have the expertise. At any rate, another flashing yellow light is the indication that the respondents have a tough time searching for press articles and news along with collateral, brochures, and publications. This is pretty common content, and an outfit that can search “case files” should be able to locate a brochure. Well, maybe not?
There were three findings that I found interesting, but I am not ready to bet my bread crust on the solidity of the data.
First, Figure 14: What are your spending plans for the following areas in the next 12 months?. The top dog is enterprise search – application. This should give some search vendors the idea to market to the AIIM membership.
Second, respondents, according to the Key Findings, can find information on the Web more easily than they can find information within their organization. This matches what Martin White and I reported in our 2009 study Successful Enterprise Search Management. It is clear that this finding underscores the wackiness in Figure 4, page 7.
Finally, the Conclusion, page 15 states:
The benefits of investment in Finance and ERP systems have only come to the fore with the increasing power of Business Intelligence (BI) reporting tools and the insight they provide for business managers. In the same way, the benefits of Content Management systems can be much more heavily leveraged by the use of Content Analytics tools.
I don’t really understand this paragraph. Finance has been stretched with the present economic climate. ERP is a clunker. Content management systems are often quite problematic. So what’s the analysis? How about cost overruns?
I tucked the study into my reference file. You may want to do the same. If the Allyis link goes dead, you can get the report directly from AIIM but you may have to join the association.
Stephen E Arnold, March 31, 2010
Like the report, a freebie.
Oracle and SAP Squabble, Opportunities for Search Vendors?
March 30, 2010
The world is changing in the enterprise. The first shift I noticed took place last year. Chief financial officers were pushing back on some procurements. I worked on one job for which the procurement team had a fixed amount of money for the year. Period. In the past, procurement teams could edge forward without having a specific amount of money to spend. The second shift is the number of companies who are bundling search inside of their applications whether the search function works particularly well or not. A good example are bigger companies who buy smaller companies with eDiscovery or content management systems. Within the smaller companies’ software resides a search stub. It may come from open source or a low ball vendor or a grandfathered deal with a search giant. Regardless of the approach, the acquiring company’s takes the position that what it just bought is going to do the job.
A third trend jumped out of the article in Marketwatch tagged “Bully Oracle Taunts Smaller Rival SAP.” For me, the most interesting comment in the story was:
They [SAP] have lost their way,” Ellison said, as he noted that it is difficult to make money selling to small and medium business. “If they don’t want to be No. 1, we sure do.” Granted, SAP had a tough year. In 2009, total revenue fell 8% and earnings per share fell 13%, including a restructuring charge. But Ellison is probably really annoyed about SAP’s recent statements that it plans to start doing more acquisitions. As the computer industry has begun to mature, Ellison has proclaimed Oracle the chief consolidator.
Forget the animosity. The point is that two companies are going to grow by acquiring other companies. Since neither outfit has a 21st century search and content processing solution, is this an opportunity for some search vendors to make their stakeholders happy and sell out to one of these aging giants? If you scan the outputs on the ArnoldIT.com Overflight system, you will see that quite a few search vendors have zero marketing activities underway. These are black holes, which may be an indication of preoccupied management or a lack of cash. A few of these outfits have a solid customer base and could benefit from the discipline an acquisition often brings to the acquired company. My hunch is that there are some ripe fruit to pick. Will Oracle and SAP squabble over the apple trees?
Stephen E Arnold, March 31, 2010
A freebie for sure.
Open Source and Fragmentation
March 30, 2010
The open source freight train continues to chug along, and it sparks some interesting discussion. I have been pointing to write ups about the dust up between for-fee data management systems and the open source NoSQL options. My attention focused on the article “Exclusive: Android Foryo to Take a Serious Shot at Stemming Platform Fragmentation.” The particulars of the write up were that open sources gets popular, attracts developers, and then fragments. The case discussed in the article is Android, Google’s open source platform used in mobile phones and other devices. The idea for Google is to get a footprint from which it can dig in its hiking boot for the assault on Mount Apple. For me, the most interesting comment was:
…we’re hearing that Google may be nearing the end of its breakneck development pace on Android’s core and shifting attention to apps and features. By the time we get to Froyo, the underlying platform — and the API that devs need to target — will be reaching legitimate maturity for the first time, which means we should have far fewer tasty treat-themed code names to worry about over the course of an average year. We like awesome new software as much as the next guy, but Google’s been moving so fast lately that they’ve created a near constant culture of obsolescence anxiety among the hardcore user base — and in turn, that leads to paralysis at the sales counter.
The larger issue, of course, concerns the use of this type of “paralysis” is that it may create an opening for non open source vendors. In search, this might be a great sales angle. After all, who wants to deploy an enterprise search solution only to discover that the zigs zagged unexpectedly? Interesting issue and a potential problem for Google and other open source surfers.
Stephen E Arnold, March 31, 2010
Nope. A freebie. I wish I could say an open source outfit paid me, but I can’t. I leave that to the azure chip crowd.
HP: Ink or Information?
March 30, 2010
I have commented about Hewlett Packard’s push into content centric activities. The deal that made me sit up and take notice was the purchase of Exstream Software for more than $1.0 billion a year or two ago. There have been moves in other content areas, including records management. Seeking Alpha caught my attention with its article “Hewlett-Packard: Printers More Valuable Than PCs” and its nifty interactive graph. The main point of the write up is that HP, despite its efforts to make its bottom-line as fat as a French-government, certified goose destined for paté, HP is a printer and ink/toner company. With much of its printing technology influenced by Canon, I wondered about HP’s innovation as well. For me, the most interesting comment in the write up was:
HP’s stock is more sensitive to changes in its printer business than changes in the notebook business. A 5% increase in HP’s printer market share will lead to a 4% upside to $53 Trefis [analyst outfit] price estimate for HP’s stock, while a 5% increase in HP’s notebook share will result in less than a 3% upside.
HP may be big but the company has to find a way to generate more bottom-line impact from its other businesses before the printer and ink business softens.
Stephen E Arnold, March 30, 2010
No one paid me to write this about HP.
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