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Vocabulary, Ontology & Specification Management at OMG

Elisa KendallSandpiper Softwareekendall@sandsoft.com

Collaborative Expedition Workshop #63July 18, 2007

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Ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM) ODM is the OMG standard for model driven ontology

development Adopted as an OMG standard in October 2006 Not one model, but a family of metamodels

– Supports exchange of independently developed models

– Provides standard profiles for ontology development in UML

– Enables consistency checking and validation of models in general

Grounded in formal logic enabling reasoning engines to understand, validate, and apply ontologies developed using the ODM

Final Adopted Specification is publicly available from the OMG web site at http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?ptc/2006-10-11

Finalization (FTF) is underway, with target completion of September 2007 (Jacksonville, FL meeting)

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Platform Independent (Normative) Metamodels (PIMs)– RDF & OWL – abstract syntax,

constraints for OWL DL & OWL Full, several compliance options

– ISO Common Logic (CL)– ISO Topic Maps (TM)

Informative Models– DL Core– Identifier (keys) model extension

to UML for ER

Mappings (MOF QVT)

UML2 Profiles for RDFS, OWL, TM

Collateral / Artifacts– XMI (ODM Specific)– Java APIs

CL<<metamodel>>

TM<<metamodel>> RDFS

<<metamodel>>

(from RDF)

RDFWeb<<metamodel>>

(from RDF)

OWLBase<<metamodel>>

(from OWL)

merge

DL<<metamodel>>

RDFBase<<metamodel>>

(from RDF)merge

merge

RDF<<metamodel>>

OWLDL<<metamodel>>

(from OWL)

merge

OWLFull<<metamodel>>

(from OWL)

merge

merge

OWL<<metamodel>>

(non-normative)

Model Driven Ontology Development: ODM

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ODM Relationship to Other OMG Standards

Ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM)

BMI Semantics for Business Vocabularies& Rules (SBVR)

BMI Production Rule Representation (PRR)(near finalization)

Direct Mapping for OWLFormal Grounding (CL)

Vocabulary in ODMRules in PRR

Mapping via W3C RIF

Information Management Metamodel (IMM)(in process)

Mappings Planned for ER, Logical DB, XML

Schema, …

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Increasing Challenge to Manage Myriad of Specifications & Artifacts

The number of artifacts under development for publication & management at OMG is increasing dramatically due to – Calls for multiple metamodels (XMI) for many emerging

standards (e.g., Information Management Metamodel, Business Process Modeling family)

– Increasing number of domain specifications (Finance, Insurance – Property & Casualty, Healthcare, Government …)

– Recent calls for RDF vocabularies & OWL ontologies, including “native”, ODM/XMI, and related model artifacts in a number of specifications

Exacerbates an already unworkable approach to management of artifacts on OMG’s web site

Recent work by the OMG architecture board includes increased formality in– Naming & version management for specifications, related

artifacts throughout adoption & revision process– Published acronyms for common use across specifications– New directory structure for specification, normative artifacts,

test suites, related documentation, including clarity in namespace definition, version management, etc.

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Related Issues Raised in W3C for Vocabulary Management

Semantic Web Deployment work in progress to provide preliminary guidance & “rules of thumb” via WG note

Use of URIs for naming – critical issues include– the URI space from which resource names are drawn– ownership– commitments made to the persistence of URIs– policies for allocating URIs within that space to the

vocabulary developers/maintainers– rules for constructing URIs to be used as resource names

Documentation

Articulation of maintenance policies

Version identification

Authoritative publication of the vocabulary or ontology

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What else is needed from a metadata & provenance perspective? “It depends on the use case …” For standards development – sandbox organization,

semantically-enabled wikis, consistent record keeping (minutes, change logs, etc.) may be enough

For public service – rich metadata including provenance (sources & authorship, dates, relevant web sites, etc.), for each definition (concepts & relations) in every ontology & KB may be required

Who should provide this? Research funding is typically focused on technology and tools, not “utility” ontology development

Based on what standards, methodology, review process?

Who should publish & manage the ontologies – should it be the registration authority for ISO standards, NIST, NARA …?

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Potential Applications for Ontology

Range from describing the semantics of the OMG specification tree to assist in local navigation

To reference vocabularies for use in search and navigation across public resources to increase responsiveness, robustness

To use in applications where co-reference resolution across multilingual corpora might assist in disaster recovery

To …