Controlled vocabularies: “Data integration is king”

Just recently a survey about “Controlled vocabularies” and their significance for enterprise information management has started. Until today 143 participants have responded and completed the survey at least partially. To give a first example what was found out, I would like to take a closer at the question: What are the main application areas of controlled vocabularies from your perspective?

A bit surprising is the intermediate result, that it´s not “Semantic Search” or “Support of multilingual applications” which was considered to be the most important application. Instead of this it turned out that “Data Integration” is king:

The bar graph shows the weighed value of each application candidate (1.0 would be a 100% acceptance that this is an important application area of controlled vocabularies). Regarding the top candidate “data integration”

• 57,4% said “very important”
• 29,8% “relevant”
• 7,4% “somewhat relevant”
• 2,1% “not relevant”
• 3,2% “Don´t know”

If you don´t think this should be the final result, please help to get a better overview of what´s going on in the controlled vocabulary community. The survey is open until May 18th, 2011 – all participants will gain access to a report with the results within the following month. Most interesting results will be made public on this blog.