The problem needs no introduction to the mainstream I.T. community as problems associated with information federation cost lives, productivity and billions of dollars a year. They may call it the "data problem", data integration, "master data", application integration or a few other names - but the problem remains the same, understanding and using data from independently conceived resources together. Often this involves using data for purposes outside of its original design intent.

...Federated data is inherently distributed, uncoordinated, messy and conflicting - yet there is value in leveraging these disparate data resources in a more unified way. It is not always clear how "neat" solutions work in this unstructured world, yet the very "scruffy" solutions seem to be insufficient. Discussions of this problem that involve, for example, the OWL, Linked Data and Common Logic communities result in theoretical and sometimes religious wars that can and have frightened potential consumers of the technology away. Cory Casanave

Questo articolo propone una risposta, nel dominio del Service Management, al problema così lucidamente proposto da Cory.

IT Service Management Ontology (ITSMO) è un progetto open-source gestito da E-Artspace per lo sviluppo di una ontologia per descrivere i servizi IT.

Google Refine è un progetto open source di Google per la pulizia di dati tabellari disordinati.

Approfondiamo il  perchè di una integrazione naturale tra i due progetti.