The Malaysian State of Sabah’s Biodiversity Center Licenses AllegroGraph to run SaBIIS

OAKLAND, Calif. — July 1, 2014 — Franz, Inc. and The Malaysian State of Sabah’s Biodiversity Center (SaBC)  announce the licensing of AllegroGraph to run the Sabah Biodiversity Integrated Information System (SaBIIS).

The Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo Island sits in the midst of one of the biodiversity hot spots of the world. One of its major concerns is the potential loss of biodiversity due to industrial development such as Oil Palm plantations. To enact effective policies to conserve biodiversity, Sabah needs an accurate and integrated view of its biodiversity. Unfortunately, such knowledge is scattered in more than 20 organizations that collect specimen data in different formats and schemas, and is always stored locally in silos. Furthermore, biodiversity information, including flora and fauna, covers vast and diverse subjects that are very difficult to model with traditional information modeling techniques. Merging this diverse information together to enable integrated understanding and discovery is a data integrating problem of mammoth proportion.

Fortunately, Semantic Technology and RDF provide a new way of information modeling to overcome these challenges, to create an integrated biodiversity repository – the Sabah Biodiversity Integrated Information System (SaBIIS). This new method is fundamentally different from the traditional data warehouse approach – there is no centralized data dictionary for each agency to map and convert its data schema to. Instead, agencies simply export their data “as is” as table views to SaBIIS which automatically maps each agency data, using individual semantic mappers, into a unified data model based on NCBI species taxonomy.

AllegroGraph is the centralized RDF database used to store this integrated biodiversity data. AllegroGraph also provides the tools for complex SPARQL, geospatial and temporal queries, needed for biodiversity analysis. SaBIIS provides Sabah the integrated view it needs to enact sensible biodiversity conservation policies.

“Lots of answers can be provided by graph (network) analysis that cannot be answered any other way,” stated Dr. Jans Aasman, CEO of Franz Inc. “Research organizations recognize that Semantic Graph Technologies are the key to providing new and innovative insights.”

About SaBC

The Sabah Biodiversity Centre (SaBC) was established on April 25, 2008 and operational on May 7, 2008 by the Sabah Biodiversity Council. SaBC is established to govern conservation and utilization of Sabahҳ biodiversity in order for the State to fully optimize its value through planning and implementing biodiversity conservation and utilization strategies enabled by an effective biodiversity information management system. SaBC believes that promoting, developing and nurturing synergy among governmental and non-governmental organization of the State are vital for the sustainability of such governance initiative.

About Franz Inc.

Franz Inc. is an innovative technology company with expert knowledge in developing and deploying Graph Search solutions. AllegroGraph, Franz’s high-performance, transactional, and scalable Graph Database, provides the solid storage layer for powerful Enterprise grade NoSQL solutions. Franz’s products and Professional Services are uniquely positioned to help bring your complex ideas to reality.

AllegroGraph’s Activity Recognition capabilities provides a powerful means to aggregate and analyze data about individual and organizational behaviors, preferences, relationships, plus spatial and temporal linkages between individuals and groups. Franz customers include Fortune 500 companies in the government, life sciences and telecommunications industries.

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