This article was co-written by Felicity Mulford (Oxford Semantic Technologies). Thank you to Valerio Cocchi (Oxford Semantic Technologies), and Ilija Kocev and Daniel Herzig (metaphacts) for their work on the demo system.
Determining compatibility between individual entities is an essential process for many businesses, across various industries and business models; from industrial configuration, supply chain, bill of materials, evaluating terms in contracts, or even for match making apps. The process may sometimes require the user to check hundreds of thousands or millions of possible combinations, to assess whether components fit together, or if components meet specified requirements. Additional factors may also need to be taken into account, for example, regulations or customer budgets. Traditional approaches are inefficient for modern day applications due to the large volumes of data, heterogeneity of data formats, complexity of customer specifications, and concerns over scalability.
