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Description
I have a dream ... about building composite knowledge management applications. In my dream, I open a Web browser and quickly pull together the KM application and data components I need in a real-time, customized fashion to do whatever business functions I have in mind. But is this just a dream?
The KM value chain
For years I have been identifying, researching, investing in and integrating different knowledge management tools. Many of those tools provide specific capabilities such as enterprise search, categorization and clustering, entity extraction, geo-tagging or visualization of some sort. While some of the tools can provide a standalone service, many KM tools are designed to work together to provide an IT value chain of data processing.
Frequently, the business goal for a KM technology is to somehow incorporate it into existing enterprise business information systems. Usually that is done to offer the user capabilities to support new business objectives or simply to improve efficiency and productivity for existing business processes. Equally often, the business goal is to deliver a technical capability never before seen by users, which changes the way they work or interact. In either scenario, integrating new software products into the existing enterprise is often the most challenging part of KM technology implementation.
A poor KM implementation that doesn't anticipate users' needs or give access to important systems or data will probably be underused at best, or ignored at worst. If the target integration environment is a Windows client/server application, integration usually requires in-depth knowledge of application programming interfaces (APIs) for the existing system as well as for the new application. If the target integration environment is an n-tier Web application, it usually requires in-depth knowledge of new APIs, as well as access to a middleware layer with often requisite, complex, n-tier Web integration tools and techniques.
Unfortunately, none of the aforementioned IT implementation activities is straightforward or standardized. The custom development activities required are typically single purpose and can't be easily reused or repurposed. All of those things entrench IT departments in a legacy support role and make it much more difficult for them to offer or support new applications and data services.
Enter services-oriented architecture (SOA)
SOA is an architectural approach based on Internet standards and XML, in which applications are altered so that they offer their services through a standards-based application interface called the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). Application developers and/or IT implementation staff can define a WSDL for a given application, and once it is available, users (human or machine) can subscribe to the Web service provided via the WSDL through a single point of access, assuming appropriate security and licensing.
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