SLabSearch

I’ve developed a new product that I’m about ready to release called SLabSearch. It is an enterprise research informatics tool that provides a single interface for searching across all electronic data repositories for information of interest. I’ve integrated the use of ontologies as the method for users to select domain concepts that form the terms used in the search.

 

The search engine I chose to work with is Google, as they not only provide a mechanism for tapping into their Internet search engine, but also their Desktop search tool and the enterprise search appliance that provides search functions across the Intranet data repositories.

 

With SLabSearch researchers can create queries that will find (using semantic ontologies) relevant data on their local machines, network file servers, instrument data repositories, Intranet web portals, ORACLE database, Internet web sites and Internet repositories such as PubMed and the U.S. Patent office.

 

Yes, it does work. (-;

Ontology as Reality Representation

I ran across this interesting 2004 paper by Barry Smith from the Department of Philosphy at the University of Buffalo who argues that the focus on "concepts" for specifing ontologies is wrong-headed and at least in the life sciences once should attempt to capture what he calls "universals and particulars that exist in reality". 

Science Commons Blog

Here’s a link to a relevant blog by the Science Commons Organization.  If you haven’t yet heard of what the Science Commons is doing, go to their website and check them out. This is a great organization supporting the dissemination of and free access to scientific innovation.

Tackling the Problem of Distributed Data

Here’s a recent article in Data Storage Today magazine on the issues of data integration and the emerging challenges and benefits from adopting an service-oriented architecture (SOA).  There is no easy solution to enterprise data integration, but perhaps we are beginning to see a sustainable platform in SOA for metadata management and application interoperability.