Thursday, September 24, 2009

scarab is alive ... barely

2 years, 4 months and 23 days .... that's how long ago I sat down in front on my notebook and fired up my Visio. I laid out the initial data flow plan for scarab. Semantics was always an itch I needed to scratch ever since my studying days. Majoring in AI made the itch worse.
The diagram stayed a diagram for the next 2 months, which was when I used eclipse to compile together the necessary libs needed for web services. Then I started building the inferrer, or parser as some would put it. I was working on black box methods (which was easier). 6 months down the road, I realised black box was not going to cut it.
True inference needed Bayesian methods. That set me back another 3 months. I finally managed to complete the base engine 3 months ago. Then I decided (actually someone in Skali decided) that a vertical demo was required to show what scarab could do. I wanted to be radical, so Flex was chosen as the weapon. Well, today, 24th September 2009, scarab's inferrer is ready to rock!
Actually, it needs to wait until I complete the ontology that goes with it ... not just some freeware RDF off the net. scarab will be live and online, in early October 09.