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Opera has several browser plugins and lively projects to build support for the Semantic Web.

One of most interesting plugins is the Tabulator RDF Browser Plugin. It's one of the few RDF tools that actually works.

The Tabulator Developers Notes ( and source code ) at MIT's DIG-CSAIL.

Interesting article on the slow takeoff of the Semantic Web.

Semantic web technology is marred in a chicken/egg paradox. The technologies are generally not useful unless they are adopted and implemented on a large scale and people are not willing to invest in implementing them unless they are useful. This is exacerbated by the fact that there are very high technology, business, and social barriers to implementing the semantic web.

The Zachman Framework is both powerful and flexible. There are several extensions and variations of the Zachman Framework available in the marketplace. In fact, it can be used as a form of 'meta-model' to map the features of two models.

Six Categories of Questions

Journalism majors know the drill by heart. The First Law of Journalistic Excellence, the 5 "Ws" of Reporting ( and an "H" throw in just to make life difficult for journalism students ). The Law states: every journalistic oeuvre must answer these eternal questions - who, what, when, where, why and how. That's a fine principle for overworked journalism students, but what about the rest of us, for example they who toil tirelessly in the murky mines of Infotechnology.

The first mention of design patterns in relation to software was made in 1987 by Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham ( who also invented CRC Cards ). The idea of design patterns then kicked around for a few years, but became popular in 1994, with the classic text "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software", edited by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, et al.

During the late 1980s, a group of academics investigating models of physical systems developed a set of guiding principles to help them perform simulations. The purpose was to perform an amazing and unprecedented feat of computation - predicting that water spilled on the top of a table would eventually drip on the floor.

The most classic and complete definition of business rules from the Business Rules Group ( blockquoted in toto, all rights gratefully acknowledged ).

Article 1. Primary Requirements, Not Secondary

1.1. Rules are a first-class citizen of the requirements world.
1.2. Rules are essential for, and a discrete part of, business models and technology models.

Note: this article first appeared as "An Intro to Service Oriented Architecture". The new "Intro to SOA" focuses primarly on the OASIS SOA Reference Architecture, which seems to be the most mature and complete of the SOA standards to date.

The Wikiopedia defines Service Oriented Architecture as:

Note first that there is a big difference between The Semantic Web to A Semantic Web. In this version of the Semantic Web, knowledge shared by individuals. A web would be owned by its participants or subscribers rather the general public, something to be actively joined, perhaps more like the basic model of a Wiki than an openly accessible public site.

The Process View 

Haley has an interesting take on the definition of business rule.

Business rule :is a statement that defines or constrains some aspect of the business. A business rule asserts business structure to control or influence the behavior of the business, i.e. a process or procedure.