Context
- Today, any sufficiently complex domain model for an interconnected information system must reckon with how much (or how little) attention it pays to the technical heritage of Knowledge Organization and its practices.
- It should come as no surprise that information systems built over nearly three decades to entertain half a billion people across 190 countries are no exception.
Meeting the challenge at Netflix
- Our recent journey to provide Netflix systems with the language, patterns, and infrastructure informed by the best practices in Semantic Data Integration and Knowledge Organization and Representation.
Focusing on:
- Data hierarchies and taxonomies. Our Primary Data Management (PDM) manages taxonomies with an open, extensible schema. It enforces data governance and consistency through change control, supports existing systems of record, and aims to replace ad-hoc ones such as spreadsheets or data hierarchies encoded directly in application logic.
- Representational models created by transforming existing GraphQL schemata from Netflix federated gateway into bare-bones ontological domain models. A more semantically expressive format extends practical uses of them.
- The nature of living and rapidly evolving business information systems with many stakeholders. Our deliverables must be integrative and additive rather than formal, mandatory, or normative.