How Compatible is Virtuoso's functionality stack with my existing RDBMS investments?

Virtuoso functionality exploitation never requires “ripping and replacing” your legacy technology investments. Here’s a simple breakdown by functionality realm:

Data Virtualization
It leverages ODBC and ODBC-JDBC Bridges for access to existing Systems of Record (CRM, HR, and other conventional Line-Of-Business Applications) and Systems of Engagement (Applications that primarily store data in HTTP logs).

The process is as follows:

  1. Identify relevant ODBC- or JDBC-accessible Data Sources

  2. Attach Data Sources to Virtuoso via the Conductor UI or built-in SQL Stored Procedures

  3. Use the SQL to RDF Views Generating Wizard to generate Quad Mappings and/or R2RML scripts

  4. Run generated scripts

  5. Enjoyed the new Data Access dimensions that a Semantic Web of Linked Data brings to data otherwise locked up in your RDBMS (which ultimately impedes all enterprise-agility-enhancement pursuits associated with Digital Transformation).

Custom Reasoning & Inference

With a Semantic Web of Linked Data in place, you can further enhance your exploitation of Virtuoso’s power by taking advantage of Custom Inference Rules.

In Virtuoso, SPARQL is also used as the Rule Language (similar to Datalog of yore), courtesy of terms from the SPIN Vocabulary. Fundamentally, this boils down to using SPARQL to create rules that are pegged to specific entity types and invoked whenever the following hold true:

  1. Macro Lib usage is indicated via specific SPARQL Query pragma
  2. Macro Lib is attached to a specific Virtuoso Storage Engine (which enables Rules evaluation to be scoped to physical and/or virtual triples)

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