OMG Architecture Ecosystem SIG
Federal CIO Council
Data Architecture Subcommittee May 2011
Cory Casanave
Why a new standard for information
modeling?
Proposition
• Federation (information sharing, interoperability, shared services, etc.) is the
problem of this decade – it is costing productivity, lives and billions of dollars
annually. It is the pre-requisite to solving our problems in the large.
Yet
• None of the standards we have directly target this problem. Not UML or OWL
or E/R or SOA or DoDAF , etc.
• They are all built for other purposes and “hacked” to solve the data problem.
Why?
And can we fix it?
A Strategic Opportunity
Today, message formats,
vocabularies and enterprise
information are closed and siloed
There is an opportunity
• To help federate information for and
about the enterprise and enterprise
systems
• To enable information and data
modeling as an open and collaborative
experience, tuned to the needs of
stakeholders
• To discover and reconcile concepts,
entities and data throughout the
enterprise and beyond.
• To unify the knowledge in multiple tools,
infrastructures and information
resources
• To enable the transformations, agility,
efficiency, collaboration and
automation we have been promising
for years
3
OMG Architecture Ecosystem SIG
Focused on better integration of information, models and metamodels
Initiated to solve OMG problems with lack of integration between
modeling languages
Progressed to addressing information federation
• The model federation problem being a special case of information federation
Two Tracks
• Solving UML specific issues with profiles and meta models
• Semantic integration of information (SIMF)
Semantic Information Modeling for
Federation (SIMF)
First stop on the roadmap, SIMF RFP (In draft)
• Focus on conceptual modeling and federation
• Unify different representations of the same thing based on semantic relations
• Unify the multiple ways information is modeled
• E/R & SQL
• UML
• XML Schema
• OWL, Common Logic & RDF
• ISO 11169
• Etc…
• Unify information sharing
• Don’t replace, federate !!!
Missing Layer:
Model Bridging Relations
Conceptual
Domain
Models
Logical
Information
Models
Kernel
Subject focused
conceptual models define
the terms and concepts of
a domain and can be
related to each other (This
is where OGV fits in)
Simple and composite
logical information
elements represent
domain concepts and can
use and extend other
information
Physical
Data Schema
SIMF Scope
SIMF Layers
Physical data schema are
grounded in logical data
models which define their
context and semantics
RFP Requirements
Modeling language (graphical and textual) encompassing
• Conceptual domain modeling – capturing the terms and concepts of the
domain, not of data. This is the semantics of the domain and our pivot
point – it captures the vocabulary of the domain and could provide the
modeling language for open government vocabularies.
• Logical Information Modeling – capturing logical information models
contextualizing domain concepts in technology independent
representations. Leverage representation people know and understand.
•
Our assumption is that physical data modeling exists and we just need to link to it,
so this is out of scope
• Model bridging relations – federation across and between layers –
connecting the dots
Semantically grounded kernel as the basis for federated modeling
Federation with existing models – UML. E/R, Schema, etc.
SIMF Target User
User target - Anyone who models or integrates information at rest or in
transit
Examples
• US Government Information Sharing [ISE].
• European Cooperation for Space Standardization
• NIEM
• Financial message interoperability (MDMI)
• Master Data Management
• Controlled vocabularies
Summary – target the users who are tasked to solve the problem!
NIEM-UML
There is also a new OMG effort to standardize a UML profile for the National
Information Exchange Model (NIEM)
This will provide for the representation of NIEM exchange packages in UML,
mapped to NIEM XML and other technology forms
NIEM has already defined concepts and data structures for exchange of
information across multiple domains
The NIEL-UML RFP is expected to be presented at the next OMG meeting in
June
DAS is invited to participate!
The NIEM effort would represent one of the physical data schema SIMF
would federation – since no one schema standard will serve all purposes.
Engagement Needed
We need to establish the business case for the SIMF endeavor
We need to engage user, government, vendor and academic stakeholders
and experts
We need to combine the vision of the semantic community with the
pragmatic solutions of the software tooling community
We need to overcome the stagnation of the status-quo
We need your help to make this happen
Interested?
Participate!
• Next step – refine RFP
• Engage user & industry stakeholders
• We invite the data modeling and ontology communities!
• We have phone meetings every 2 weeks (Monday 11 AM EST)
• Email list (Open to all)
• Send email to “request at omg dot org”
• Wiki
• http://www.omgwiki.org/architectureecosystem/doku.php?id=semantic_information_modeling_for_federation_rfp
Cory Casanave (AESIG Chair)
• Cory dash c at modeldriven dot org
Discussion…