I was recently asked to help with a systems implementation. This system was no small beast by any means. The organisation wanted a complete system, with one business module, but also wanted the scope of the underlying system to cover up to some 23 business program, each with their own separate business logic.
I’m sure that some developers would faint at this suggestion — that you could have a modular approach to data and business logic management without directly handling the ontological relationships between data entities!
Strangely enough, I had read some information on Lars Marius Garshol’s blog a few months ago that gave me the idea for using topic maps for identity management and had an idea — what if you use a topic map to handle ALL the relationships between databases and entities …. yes … all of them??!
Conceptually, I found the idea very interesting. Ultimately, it would mean that you could add and remove system modules without adversely affecting other modules because all you would need to do is handle the associated ontological and semantic relationships stored in one area — the topic map layer: an approach called Semantic Technology
This was also my first go at looking at enterprise systems architectural concepts (with a little help from my colleague and friend “Billy”) for a service oriented architecture. I have a feeling that these two disciplines could learn a lot from each other
M
