Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

IBM Open Sources UIMA

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the more-the-merrier dept.

psykocrime writes "Line56 is reporting that IBM has open-sourced core components of their UIMA project. UIMA is (or was) an IBM Research Project for managing "unstructured information" such as free-text. IBM describes UIMA as: 'an open, industrial-strength, scalable and extensible platform for creating, integrating and deploying unstructured information management solutions from combinations of semantic analysis and search components. [...] and makes the core Java framework available as open source software to provide a common foundation for industry and academia to collaborate and accelerate the world-wide development of technologies critical for discovering the vital knowledge present in the fastest growing sources of information today.' The newly opened source is available at SourceForge."

6 of 23 comments (clear)

  1. Translation... by IAAP · · Score: 2, Interesting
    an open, industrial-strength, scalable and extensible platform for creating, integrating and deploying unstructured information management solutions from combinations of semantic analysis and search components.

    FTFA: UIMA is about text analytics, which encompasses functions like search and pattern analysis. "It's able to create sophisticated solutions that extract insight from a large amount of unstructured data stored in computers," says Dr. Nelson Mattos, IBM VP of Information and Interaction. "The goal is to create an open standard for analytics."

    In other words, it's now an opensource way of picking out themes in text. So, I guess you can (or the company you work for) have a version of Carnivore

    1. Re:Translation... by Eightyford · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In other words, it's now an opensource way of picking out themes in text. So, I guess you can (or the company you work for) have a version of Carnivore

      And so can China. Woohoo...

      --
      Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
    2. Re:Translation... by ZachPruckowski · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "semantic analysis" and "themes in text"? I see a great context based spell checker.

  2. From the IBM UIMA SDK by elviscious · · Score: 2, Interesting
    From the IBM UIMA SDK Page (http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/uima/)

    Unstructured information management (UIM) applications are software systems that analyze unstructured information (text, audio, video, images, etc.) to discover, organize, and deliver relevant knowledge to the user. In analyzing unstructured information, UIM applications make use of a variety of analysis technologies, including statistical and rule-based Natural Language Processing (NLP), Information Retrieval (IR), machine learning, and ontologies. IBM's UIMA is an architectural and software framework that supports creation, discovery, composition, and deployment of a broad range of analysis capabilities and the linking of them to structured information services, such as databases or search engines. The UIMA framework provides a run-time environment in which developers can plug in and run their UIMA component implementations, along with other independently-developed components, and with which they can build and deploy UIM applications. The framework is not specific to any IDE or platform.

    Whatever the hell that means...
  3. Re:Translation for common people: by browncs · · Score: 2, Interesting
    IBM is open sourcing all its abandoned garage projects.

    If you stop and think about it for a moment, this would be stupid for IBM to do, and it's obviously not what they are doing.

    Paradoxically, it costs money to open source something (at least for a big company like IBM). Getting the package ready for the light of day, getting all the approvals and sign-offs, and staffing the resource to keep working on it, all take money.

    IBM wouldn't do that for something it doesn't consider valuable in some way to its business.

    This is actually a perfect example of the kind of thing IBM likes to open source. It's a framework that (hopefully) will actually make unstructured analysis components work together in an enterprise (at least as developers start adopting it). In order to get to "critical mass", open sourcing the framework lets developers know that they can count on it (a) being there and (b) being free. It'll (again hopefully) make the market space larger for all players, allowing IBM to compete on its merits, rather than having to try to displace entrenched proprietary solutions.

  4. Re:Sign me up, man! by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That, or maybe you're just trying to get the word out to developers. Since the mainstream press will basically just print anyone's press releases as articles without revision, you have a pretty good chance of getting your word out there verbatim these days. It doesn't matter if they can understand it if they don't even try to understand it.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"