ABSTRACT
The rapid growth of the Internet and World Wide Web has led to vast amounts of information available online. In addition, business and government organizations create large amounts of both structured and unstructured information that needs to be processed, analyzed, and linked. It is estimated the amount of information currently stored in a digital form in 2007 at 281 exabytes and the overall compound growth rate at 57% with information in organizations growing at even a faster rate. It is also estimated that 95% of all current information exists in unstructured form with increased data processing requirements compared to structured information. The storing, managing, accessing, and processing of this vast amount of data represent a fundamental need and an immense challenge in order to satisfy needs to search, analyze, mine, and visualize these data as information.
