comment: topicmapmail Digest, Vol 74, Issue 1

Hi Patrick,

  I enjoyed your post . . . huddled masses indeed.

  It brought to mind the quandary that faced me more than 30 years ago.
The DoD was pushing forward a program they called IWSDB for Integrated
Weapons System Database. As a contractor for the Navy, I was glad that
they were finally going to reconcile the disparate data in each of the
services. Highest on my mind was semantic interoperability.

  So I began contacting officials to ask how they were going to
reconcile terminology. And of course I found this little detail had been
overlooked. They were going to have an integrated database, but they had
no idea how to wrangle the data definitions into a single structure.
Apparently applying computer power to the issue would be enough.

  Today, despite the potential of the internet, they simply have
automated the Babel.

Warm regards,

Neal



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Subject: topicmapmail Digest, Vol 74, Issue 1

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