Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

May 22, 2012

SQL Azure Labs Posts

Filed under: Azure Marketplace,Microsoft,SQL,Windows Azure,Windows Azure Marketplace — Patrick Durusau @ 10:36 am

Roger Jennings writes in Recent Articles about SQL Azure Labs and Other Value-Added Windows Azure SaaS Previews: A Bibliography:

I’ve been concentrating my original articles for the past six months or so on SQL Azure Labs, Apache Hadoop on Windows Azure and SQL Azure Federations previews, which I call value-added offerings. I use the term value-added because Microsoft doesn’t charge for their use, other than Windows Azure compute, storage and bandwidth costs or SQL Azure monthly charges and bandwidth costs for some of the applications, such as Codename “Cloud Numerics” and SQL Azure Federations.

As of 22 May 2012, there are forty-four (44) posts in the following categories:

  • Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket plus Codenames “Data Hub” and “Data Transfer” from SQL Azure Labs
  • Apache Hadoop on Windows Azure from the SQL Server Team
  • Codename “Cloud Numerics” from SQL Azure Labs
  • Codename “Social Analytics from SQL Azure Labs
  • Codename “Data Explorer” from SQL Azure Labs
  • SQL Azure Federations from the SQL Azure Team

If you need quick guides and/or incentives to use Windows Azure, try these on for size.

April 18, 2012

Windows Azure Marketplace

Filed under: Dataset,Windows Azure Marketplace — Patrick Durusau @ 6:09 pm

Windows Azure Marketplace

The location of the weather data sets for the Download 10,000 Days of Free Weather… post.

I was somewhat disappointed by the small number of data sets and equally overwhelmed when I saw the number of applications at this site.

One that stood out was an EDI to XML translation service, featuring “manual” translations. Yikes!

But the principle was what interested me.

That is the offering of an interface that “translates” data that users can then consume via some other application.

There are any number of government data sets, in a variety of formats, with diverse semantics, that could be useful, if they were only available with a common format and reconciled semantics. (True I would prefer to capture their true diversity but also need to have a product users will buy.)

To make that repeatable for a large number of data sets, the creation the tool that offers the common format and reconciled semantics, I am thinking that a topic map would be quite appropriate.

Of course, need to find data sets that are of commercial interest (unlike campaign contribution datasets, businesses already know which members of government they own and which they don’t).

Thoughts? Suggestions?

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