Howard and all,
I have prepared a short summary of the project progress and design decisions made up until now within the FMV PLCS Reference Data 2011 project. One of the repeated activities in the project is to present the ongoing work to the TC and collect feedback. If appropriate I can present this today. Below is what I plan to present. Sorry for not giving you all more time to read it through in advance!
Unfortunately I'll need to drop out of the meeting no later than 16:45 ECT (45 minutes into the meeting).
Important!
- What is presented below can and might change at a later stage based on project findings and YOUR feedback!
Short about the project and some links to reference material;
Project description:
The overall purpose of the FMV RD 2011 project is to put the essential part of PLCS that Reference Data represents, in place and achieve acceptable quality in the class (concept) definitions and their management. This will enable the fullfillment of one of the main goals of PLCS, which is not only to enable high quality data sharing, but also to enable high quality regarding information sharing, i.e. making sure that the data conveys the same meaning to all involved parties. In order to achieve this, product related nomenclature used needs to be identified, defined and incorporated in the different levels of Reference Data. Besides high quality Reference Data and the guidelines for its format, development and approval in the context of OASIS, the project also aims at devleloping and launching a server (a Reference Data Server - RDS), which stores and provides access to the Reference Data from tools used during Reference Data development as well as during product data export and import. The server should also provide access to the Reference Data to human users in need of understanding terms used related to product data.
The project is divided into two development tracks; Track 1 concerns the Reference Data and Track 2 concerns the development and launch of a Reference Data Server. The requirements for the Reference Data Server (RDS) is specified as a part of Track 1 and then executed in Track 2. Both tracks will run in parallell, but Track 1 will start about a month ahead of Track 2.
The projects is working in the scope of the PLCSlib SysML environment and the project deliverables therefore has this focus.
Proposed design decisions and work progress:
One of the major gaps in the existing Reference Data approach is that there is no clear way described of how to relate different languages in the same or different contexts (different RDL:s) to each other. The project has therefore looked into this and come up with the described proposal;
http://cmapspublic3.ihmc.us/rid=1JYSG29BX-28P7RQC-VT0/RDL%20relationship%20model%202.cmap (collapsed)
Things especially worth mentioning;
- the suggested naming pattern/scheme for PLCS RDL:s is; "context-RDL-languagecode"
(not country code as many languages can be spoken within one country). Examples are given in the above models.
- the connections between RDL:s are made from the non OASIS, more specific contexts, towards the more general PSM RDL. I.e. the PSM RDL does not need to know about which RDL:s extends it with new context specific labels or adds subclasses to it. The imports have been tested with Protegé and the approach works.
As mentioned earlier, the project aims at providing access to the RDL to human users with a "dictionary interface" applied on the RDS, which as a fact also then acts as a term bank (dictionary server). The combination of these two worlds (Classification of information model entities with RD, and terminological definitions for concepts) adds a level of complexity. But on the other hand it also enables higher quality in the information exchange while the definitions and terms of everyday business is also used to classify the data being exchanged. This model points out some of the relationships;
Things especially worth mentioning;
- Terminology specialists in the project pointed out that;
- all RD classes doesn't have a corresponding terminological concept ("retired officer")
- some terminological concepts must be defined in order for the meaning of a RD class description to be clear, but these will not be used as RD
- some concepts corresponds to terminological concepts, but different descriptions and definitions might be needed
- This approach will possibly enable the "PLCS Terms" i PLCSlib to be represented/stored in the same way as Reference Data is, i.e. in OWL.
The approach of the project (based on the implicit PLCS requirements to enable information exchange) requires that the way Reference Data is represented is modified. The model below shows the current proposal.
Things especially worth mentioning;
- The project has not yet addressed the development, approval and maintenance process of RD, which mean there will most likely be further extensions to the model (mostly in the meta data areas)
- We are aiming at recommending Protegé 4.2 as the preferred tool for RD development.
- OWL API
- context dependent labels can be presented in the taxonomy tree
- We're moving to OWL 2 (talk to Phil Spiby for more on this...)
- We will add terminological capabillities by bringing in W3C SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System), and extend the use of Dublin Core for meta data. No "home made" elements needed so far...
- The new XML elements included supports the suggested RDL structure and imports, the context/language specific extensions and the dictionary/terminology centric extensions.
- The project will update PLCSlib Help/Information sections with RD guidelines, both tool agnostic as well as how different tools might support development and other activities.
And as said earlier, YOUR comments are expected, welcome and needed!
Regards,
Mats
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| Mats Nilsson AK Logistik - LogUT Telefon: 08-782 47 24 |
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