Endeca on Freebase
Two of my favorite companies (offerings may be a better descriptor) are Endeca and Freebase. Endeca has been on a tear with its social navigation and MDEX Engine (think XML like database but no predefined schemas). I love this offering for consumer web apps when many product attributes exist and apparently so does Endeca customers. They are said to be 100% referencable. While I haven't put my hands on the admin workbench it appears that Endeca may struggle with real-time/near real-time data due to its snap-shot style integration but that is clearly offset by the ability to combine structured data (RDBMs, ERP, CRM...), semi-structured (think email To, From, Subject, Body), and unstructured data (e.g. marketing brochures or data from a CMS).
Freebase (summarized here ) is an ambitious open database project from Metaweb that is IMHO desperately in need of an application (among other things*). A tool like Endeca shields the user of the app from sparsity in the data attributes/content while encouraging further exploration. I'm not certain what 'the app' is but snapping a tool like Endeca ontop of Freebase would enable less technical folks to create apps. Some of those are bound to be interesting.
* Freebase should enforce a 'true' entry approach a la wikipedia i.e. there is only one entry per topic in Wikipedia. If you don't like that entry you modify it or fight to have your modifications accepted. In Freebase you may find several domains all varying slightly from each other but essentialy all about the same thing. There is nothing stopping a person from creating their own domain even if it is identical to an other domain.
UPDATE - Steve Papa, CEO of Endeca, just dropped me a note mentioning the just released 'real-time' version of their offering. I'll paraphrase his comments here: imagine a new Freebase object is added and it is automatically instantiated in Endeca in real-time.
Really cool especially considering the * above! Now we need a connector for the Freebase API from Endeca and it's party time.
