FW: DRM Report - slightly off topic

["Chiusano Joseph" <chiusano_joseph@bah.com>]

Per Duane's request, here is a report on yesterday's US Federal Government Data Reference Model (DRM) Public Forum, with an emphasis on its relation to SOA. If you have any questions on this, please let me know - I am directly involved in this initiative.

 

Ken Laskey: Please feel free to add anything from your perspective. (Ken was in the audience)

 

(1) The DRM is the fifth of the Federal Enterprise Architecture's set of reference models, and its primary use case is to facilitate interagency information sharing. It will also facilitate the harmonization of data representation across the federal government, the creation/harmonization of data standards, and the establishment of authoritative data sources through its standard representation of the following 3 areas (note that "Data Sharing" is the strongest relation to SOA):

 

- Data Description (includes structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data, as well as data sources)

- Data Sharing (includes "exchange packages" and data access points)

- Data Context (taxonomies)

 

The notion for exchange packages is that federal agencies can use them to define their data exchanges. They can also use existing standards such as WSDL (see point #4 below).

 

(2) Yesterday's session placed emphasis on moving from abstract to concrete, with the notion of an "Executable DRM"

 

Please note: We all know that a reference model is an abstract representation, but yesterday we needed to send the message to agencies that they will have something that they can implement within their systems. So in essence, what was presented could be considered an implementation of the DRM.

 

(3) The public Wiki for the DRM is at:

http://colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?DataReferenceModel

 

It contains a link to yesterday's Public Forum program (see "Key Date(s) to Note")

 

(4) We have created a draft DRM XML Schema along with an accompanying specification, which is available at (also from the link to the Public Forum under "Draft FEA DRM Schema"):

 

http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/drm/schema/Draft_FEA_DRM_Schema.htm

 

Here is the presentation on the DRM XML Schema that I helped present yesterday:

http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/drm/PublicForum_2005-06-13/Daconta_DRM_Schema_Presentation_2005_06_13.ppt

 

In the section on external references, we describe how federal agencies can leverage open standards that they already use rather than creating representations according to the DRM vocabulary.

 

If you have any comments on this work, or suggestions for its improvement, please let me know and I will pass them on.

 

Thanks,

Joe

 

Joseph Chiusano

Booz Allen Hamilton

Visit us online@ http://www.boozallen.com