Auction giant eBay is taking to the semantic web for helping to document its systems as part of its grid computing initiative in its data center. Semanticweb.com recently discussed why and how with Neel Sundaresan, Director of eBay Research Labs.
Semanticweb.com: What is the main purpose of using semantic technologies at eBay?
Sundaresan: The first and the main purpose of using semantic technologies is documentation. We know that a well-documented system is a well-maintained system. As we have entities like operating systems, databases, servers, storage systems, and instances of these, we want to be able to describe two things -- what are their properties and how these entities are related to each other. When you want to create new instances you want to know conceptually and structurally where they fit. Hence, a well-defined object hierarchy becomes important.
When you want to modify or delete instances you further want to know how that affects entities they are related to. In a complex large-scale system, defining these properties, inheritances, and relationships help us better manage, troubleshoot and scale the systems. Semantic technologies provide the right fit.
RDF provides the underlying framework for semantic description of our systems. OWL is a derivative of RDF with a stronger machine interpretability, which is important when you want software to interpret your rules to provide interfaces or take actions. We are both a consumer of these technologies and a key player in driving the Grid standards (OGF). [The OGF is the international community dedicated to accelerating grid computing adoption by providing an open forum for grid innovation and developing open standards for grid software interoperability; standards such as RDF can be used to extend current grids into semantic grids in which information and services are given well-defined meaning.]
Any well-managed and documented system should be using some sort of semantic technology. [But] people don't always wait for standards to come around to help them solve their problems. That is why many of these tend to be one-off implementations. The vision of semantic web included RDF as a syntax and schema framework for a metadata description language for the web. RDF itself was preceded by other work for non-web environments. RDF is just a framework and is not the only framework. Some [organizations] went with RDF while others did not. Specific instances of RDF have to be created for individual domains.
For instance, almost a decade ago, while some of us were using it to describe the Web, other standards were being formed. OSD (Open Software Description) comes to mind -- it was a language for describing contents and dependencies of software packages. It was used to deliver different types of software to diverse client platforms.
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