The Evolution of Data
There are solid intellectual reasons why XML has been adopted so quickly as a way of exchanging data, and why web services and service oriented architecture are sure to be the way we implement systems in the next few years. It is important to put all of this into a context to help explain why it is so important to make this paradigm shift in the way we exchange data and information. The rapid adoption of the Justice XML data dictionary and the eagerness with which we seek these standards for information sharing are explained well in a white paper that discusses the concept of the Smart-Data Enterprise to which we are all naturally aspiring.
The context is that the way programs treat data is evolving, and our technical approach to writing software and the way software handles data is evolving. Since the days of keeping data hidden in proprietary programs, we have made amazing progress to allow data to have independent significance, without being a product of software programs. As we move toward the deployment of the semantic web, this trend must continue to the point where data exists in a completely independent space, without requiring a programmatic context in which it is defined.
Michael Daconta has defined the context for the evolution of data in a forward thinking article that describes the evolution of data toward the Smart-Data Enterprise. Daconta writes about the ways that the smart data continum will impact enterprise information system design over the next 5 years. I suspect that the time period in his projection will go beyond 5 years in the criminal justice system, but his description of where we are going with enterprise systems is exactly what has to happen to finally achieve the full integration of justice information systems. Daconta supplies the context within which we can explain why we are committed to advancement like XML, web services and service oriented architectures.
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