On 2/26/15 12:44 PM, Paul Houle wrote:
I'd go back to Microsoft Access to highlight the problem with status quo.I think Access is a pretty good tool that punches above its weight, but when businesspeople want to make a "database" they frequently pick Excel. Even though you can use Excel to visually create database tables and forms and sprinkle in just a little bit of Visual Basic to make a real app, untrained people have a difficult time with data modelling. Even if you could make all the "coding" go away, you'd still have extreme difficulties because people would (i) pick a bad data model, and (ii) realize it later when there is a lot of data in the system.Two angles to these problems are:(1) The OMG has developed a large number of standards centered around the "model driven architecture", which, like the Semantic Web, is a work in process. The OMG has more of an enterprise focus so it is worth understanding what they've done. UML started out as a diagramming tool, but eventually wants to become executable, because so long as you have a separate map and territory, these will diverge.(2) "Business rules engines", primarily based on forward chaining, have been promised as another technology that lets businesspeople express their will in something human readable but this too is a challenge. To be specific, I've built some systems that are based on a first-order logical theory, and many of these rules engines don't have a real query optimizer so the order that I write the conditions in can be the difference between something that runs in 1ms and something that takes 20 seconds. If somebody who isn't hep to that makes a change to the system, they can break it.The are multiple angles of attack on this problem, like ultimately you need the query optimizer, but I think semantics have a lot to offer both (1) and (2) in the sense of being able to start with a general domain model for something like CRM and then specialize for a particular company without doing a lot of programming.
Yes! -- Regards, Kingsley Idehen Founder & CEO OpenLink Software Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com Personal Weblog 1: http://kidehen.blogspot.com Personal Weblog 2: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen Twitter Profile: https://twitter.com/kidehen Google+ Profile: https://plus.google.com/+KingsleyIdehen/about LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen Personal WebID: http://kingsley.idehen.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this
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