Brian Sletten

Presentations

Data Integration Part I : Beyond Cutesy Mashups

Ever since we started doing relational joins, we've looked for ways to tie data together. When all we had were databases, our integration strategies were simple. The web has given us no end of new data sources to integrate but the strategies to do so are less clear. Where we can glue data together, it seems like the best we can come up with is locating Starbucks stores on Google Maps.

We want control of our data and our mashup results. We want ever more ways to view, explore and requery them in multi-faceted ways. We want data processing to be as simple as word processing has become. We want our data integration strategies to be less Vanilla Ice "Ice-Ice Baby" and more Nine Inch Nails "The Hand that Feeds" with the fluidity of a Phish tease (trust me, it makes sense).

In this first talk, we will describe the data integration landscape as we see it now and where it is likely to be in the near future. We will discuss the benefits and deficiencies of XML and Service-Oriented Architectures in this space as well as look at things like JSON, RSS and RDF. This part of the talk will be more conceptual and should be accessible to geeks and non-geeks alike.

Data Integration Part II : The Future, Today

Following on the overview of part I, we will introduce a slew of emerging technologies that are starting to make tomorrow's integration strategies available today. Come explore technologies that allow real mashups to function on both the web and the Enterprise. We can use a variety of languages and tools to link legacy data and modern content sources. We will explore resource-oriented computing as a new way of building systems that manage information spaces, not code.

We will look at research projects like Simile from MIT, open source projects like Aperture, metadata storage systems like Mulgara and scalable orchestration environments like NetKernel. What happens when you mix the concepts of REST with Unix Pipes and Service-oriented architectures? What happens when you leverage the power of the web as a global data source in the context of your own day-to-day activities? What happens when you have an open world data model applied to the world of information resources?

This second talk will be more technical and hand's on. We will cover a lot of material so beginner technologists may get a little overwhelmed, but if they are patient and willing to go with the flow, they should be fine.