Consistency and interoperability via emerging standards

Standards particularly relevant to information management and information access are being developed that will facilitate system interoperability and encourage integration. These include web services to integrate portals, Java Specification Request (JSR) 170 for universal content access, XQuery for XML data sources, Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) as a common way to communicate with SQL databases and spreadsheets, and Service Data Objects (SDO) as a consistent way of handling data within applications.

Unstructured information management architecture

UIMA is an open, industrial-strength, scalable and extensible platform for building analytic applications or search tools that process text or other unstructured information to find the hidden meaning, relationships and relevant facts. Originally developed by IBM in collaboration with numerous government, commercial, scientific and academic institutions, UIMA is now supported by a diverse community and is being standardised.

Automated email archiving and retrieval systems

Expect to see centralised archiving of email from mail servers and local storage, as well as the reduction of attachments to a single central copy to reduce duplication and to increase the ability to retrieve essential information hidden within messages.

Extended enterprise search facilities

Search engine technology will evolve into a more encompassing information access technology that can explore applications such as document management, web content management or relational database management systems, and provide users with insight into their contents. Modular architectures with a wide variety of relevance modelling and significant customisation features will become standard.

Unified interface for information management

Users are more productive when presented with a familiar interface. When pulling together different types of information, a consistent and unified interface will significantly improve productivity. While portals promised to provide the window into information, the reality is that most users drive their desktop from their calendaring and email application rather than the corporate dashboard or portal.