The Anzo Data Collaboration Server lies at the heart of the Cambridge Semantics architecture. The server follows a distributed Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) pattern in which all system components are connected together by a secure asynchronous messaging fabric. This approach has many advantages, foremost of which is the ability to scale up the server across a hardware cluster in which many of the component services can be executed in parallel for greater throughput. Another significant advantage of this design is the ease with which new Anzo services may be added, including integration with third-party products, legacy systems and remote Web services.
The Anzo Data Collaboration Server supports the W3C’s semantic standards (RDF, RDFS, OWL, SPARQL) at every level of the software stack. This makes Anzo a unique platform for the native support of sophisticated, next-generation, semantically-enabled applications.
The Anzo Data Collaboration Server provides RDF and binary/file storage and implements registries and service directories for client-side applications and system use. The server can also function as an ontology repository and web service directory. User and role management can integrate with an organization’s existing directory server or can be handled via the Anzo Server’s included LDAP directory server.
When it comes to RDF storage tasks, Cambridge Semantics understands that one size does not fit all. We know that more than one approach to RDF storage may be required in a single environment. For that reason, the Anzo Collaboration Server is designed to work with all the industry leading RDF storage products yet maintain a single programming model and standard tool, so that your application does not have to change when your store does.
Business logic on the server may be developed in a number of programming languages including Java, JavaScript and PHP. A client-side API is available for .NET, Java and JavaScript (in the Web browser) that reflects a new programming model designed for developing applications that can take full advantage of all the benefits that the semantic approach offers.
The Anzo Data Collaboration Server is architected to ensure that applications written for the server are as scalable as possible. In particular, the architecture implements data replication and multiple levels of disk-, memory-, and client-based caching. Data is transparently replicated to client-side databases in order to make local API access as fast as possible and avoid expensive round trips to the data server. All replicated data is automatically synchronized in near real-time with the server. Update transactions use an optimistic concurrency approach that allows scaling in parallel.
The Anzo Data Collaboration Server is a Java server with component services that execute in one or more OSGi runtimes connected via the Java Messaging Standard (JMS), allowing for cross-platform deployments. The server includes an administrative console and supports the standard JMX management interfaces and a J2EE compatible servelet container.