A Note from TopQuadrant’s CEO, Irene Polikoff
There is a new approach in the world of data and it’s getting a lot of buzz in the industry — Data Fabric. Having participated in discussions about it at the Enterprise Data World conference in April, and other recent events, I clearly see the growth in its popularity. Gartner identified data fabric as the top trend for data and analytics in 2021. Some analysts estimate the data fabric market will reach $4.5B by 2026. Data fabric is an architectural approach designed to help organizations better deal with the increasing number of data sources, ever-changing application requirements and distributed processing. It’s not a single technology or even a simple collection of tools, but a design concept that requires multiple existing and emerging data management technologies.
You can think of data fabric as a web connecting multiple locations, types, and sources of data – both on-premises and in the public cloud. This network of connections includes a wide range of information about enterprise data. At the core of data fabrics are Data Catalog applications like TopBraid EDG that are implemented as knowledge graphs. We at TopQuadrant, have long believed in the importance of knowledge graphs to the transformation of enterprise metadata management. It is rewarding to see this view becoming more and more prevalent. According to Gartner’s report, “How to Activate Metadata to Enable a Composable Data Fabric,” July 2020:
“In a data fabric approach, one of the most important components is the development of a dynamic, composable and highly emergent knowledge graph that reflects everything that happens to your data. This core concept in the data fabric enables the other capabilities that allow for dynamic integration and data use case orchestration. It then renders all of the metadata available through a catalog interface.”
Best Practices and Guidance
We are frequently asked for advice on ontologies and ontology modeling. In addition to answering these questions directly, we often address them as blog topics.
Here is the list of some of our most recent blog posts about modeling:
Why I use SHACL For Defining Ontology Models
This blog focuses on key capabilities of SHACL and advantages of using SHACL for ontology modeling. We also offer guidance to people switching to SHACL from OWL and debunk some myths about SHACL.
In this blog Irene Polikoff talks about why, after being a strong supporter of using OWL, she no longer uses it and has completely replaced it with the more suitable capabilities of SHACL.
Reification – Capturing Facts about Facts
This blog describes what reification is and why and when it is needed in working with RDF graphs, and describes four approaches for implementing it.
RDF-Star – Why, How and When You Should Use it
If you want to know more about the newest option for implementing reification, this blog is for you. It provides guidance on how to create and query RDF-star data in TopBraid EDG. It also offers best practices for using the RDF-star approach to reification.
Overview of TopBraid EDG Ontologies
Read this blog to learn more about built-in ontologies in TopBraid EDG and how to extend them.
Classes and Node Shapes – When to Separate Them
Learn the basics about Node Shapes in SHACL, their purposes, when to use them, how they are different from classes and when to use them separately from classes.
Properties and Property Shapes – What are the Differences
Learn how Property Shapes are different from properties, and how they are used.
New Customers, Media Mentions and Speaking Updates!
New Customers
A global engineering, management and development company selected TopBraid EDG – Vocabulary Management and Explorer to better manage its enterprise taxonomy, ontology, and internal reference data.
A Canada-based multinational media conglomerate added Business Glossaries to their current installation of TopBraid EDG – Vocabulary Management to better manage its taxonomies.
A Norwegian government agency responsible for life, health, working conditions, and the environment selected TopBraid EDG – Vocabulary Management to manage regulations and requirements.
The second-largest video gaming company in America and Europe selected TopBraid EDG – Vocabulary Management and TopBraid EDG – Metadata Management to better manage and harness the vast amount of data it has to improve games and to enhance the experience of future players.
An American-based multinational technology company selected TopQuadrant’s professional services to extend TopBraid EDG – Vocabulary Management for its Human Resources Group.
A federal executive department of the U.S. Government selected TopQuadrant’s professional services to extend its current installation of TopBraid EDG-Vocabulary Management, Reference Data Management and Metadata Management packages.
An American Fortune 500 company which offers a wide range of financial products and services selected TopBraid EDG – Vocabulary Management to unify, manage, and optimize use of their data.
TopQuadrant in the News
KM World Article: January 11, 2021, Information Governance 101: The regulatory compliance survival kit. A discussion with TopQuadrant’s Irene Polikoff (CEO), Ralph Hodgson (CTO), Robert Coyne (CMO).
Speaking Updates
EDW Virtual Conference 2021, April 18-21, 2021 Irene Polikoff presented “Data Cataloging with Knowledge Graphs.” Irene also addressed many questions from attendees in a two-part blog post.
Endorse 2021 Conference, March 16-19, 2021 Irene Polikoff presented, “Automating Reference Data Crosswalks Using Knowledge Graphs” on March 16, Track 2 – Solutions.
UPCOMING AND RECENT WEBINARS
UPCOMING: June 17, 2021 at 11:30 EDT, “How Metadata Management Must Evolve to Support Data Fabric.” In this webinar, TopQuadrant will discuss the new term, “data fabric,” what it means, why it requires knowledge graphs to implement, advice on moving from traditional metadata management to metadata management with knowledge graphs, and much more. To learn more, we invite you to register here.
RECORDED: TopQuadrant, Findwise and TietoEVRY Present: A New Way to do Data Governance. In this webinar, TopQuadrant joined with TietoEVRY and Findwise to show how data governance combined with modern search can speed up digitalization, by providing a management structure, processes, and the curation of key assets such as enterprise taxonomies, reference data and authority lists to be used in categorizing information.
RECORDED: What’s New in TopBraid EDG 7.0? This webinar demonstrates how the new 7.0 release delivers a modernized architecture and deployment process. It also offers a way to directly edit files using the EDG UI, a number of improvements to ontology development, editing of data, better support for localization, and other capabilities.
RECORDED: Data Cataloging with Knowledge Graphs Knowledge graphs are a key technology for data cataloging because they can meaningfully capture and connect the vast variety of enterprise data sources. Check out the on-demand webinar resources.
UPDATED RESOURCES
NEW WEB PAGES: We have recently added new resource pages specifically aimed at two growing customer sectors Life Sciences and Asset Management:
CUSTOMER REVIEWS: Below are a few excerpts from our customer reviews on
Gartner peer insights. We encourage you to submit your own review!
“TopQuadrant’s Enterprise Data Governance puts metadata management in the hands of the business stewards while ensuring compliance with standards. In addition, the open platform makes it easy to import, export and share our data, metadata and data schemas.” — Government Customer
TopQuadrant…”has rich experience in RDF-based technologies, with a leading role in developing new technologies such as SHACL.” — Manufacturing Customer
“TopQuadrant EDG is a unique technology stack that is built 100% with W3C Standards. The true key for interoperability and 100% no blackbox. This allows to build Enterprise Knowledge Graph and foundations for an IT systems as a layer under application future-proof. ” — Services Industry Customer
SUMMER-FALL 2021
COMING UP:
TopQuadrant will host a joint webinar with a customer in the financial services industry on their mission-critical use of TopBraid EDG, and a sponsored webinar on metadata management with DATAVERSITY. Stay tuned for more details.
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