Overview

Information about government processes, information and IT systems currently exists in a diverse set of forms, formats, repositories and documents with little to no management and coordination. The result is that there is unmanageable redundancy in the developing and re-developing the same information, different models, architectures and studies about the same things. Understanding and integrating this wide variety of information is almost impossible and thus generally such understanding and integration is not achieved.

The OsEra Metadata infrastructure will provide a "smart" repository for architectures at multiple levels of abstraction, from multiple sources and with multiple views. This infrastructure will integrate the OMG-Meta Object Facility (MOF) and Resource Description Framework (RDF) and RDF-Schema as defined by W3C as part of the "Semantic Web" initiative and will integrate the specification and provisioning concepts of the OMG Model Driven Architecture (MDA).

Active SubProjects

There is a current GSA-supported project to create a demonstration prototype of the OsEra architecture. As part of this project an initial prototype of the Metadata Management facility is being created. This project is expected to complete in February 2005.

Roadmap

The following items are being assessed as foci for Metadata Management subprojects:

  • An RDF Store capable of managing sets of enterprise-scale architecture with concurrent distributed development.
  • Concurrent development support of models
  • A DBMS to hold the architectures and their metadata
  • An RDF query processor in support of access to the RDF store, support inferencing, provisioning and the user interface layer.
  • One or more inference and rules engines that help integrate, expand and the metadata in support of the other layers.
  • An API into the metadata supported by query and inferencing. The API will be able to access an extended view of the under implications of that model extended by the inferencing support. (For example, a subclass will show the features and constraints of its superclasses).
  • Transformation; We expect query, rules and inference to support transformation. It is unclear if there is additional support required for transformation, something along the lines of a RDF-QVT. Our working assumption is that between query and rules there will be sufficient capability but this requires more investigation.
  • The structure of OsEra and the models must allow for separation of concerns across multiple dimensions. Of utmost importance is the separation between business concerns and technology concerns. Architectures should be as free of technical implications as possible, allowing greater freedom in the selection an integration of multiple architectures using the MDA design pattern

  • OsEra "OntoBots" that will use ontologies and inference to help define, manage and integrate architectures. OntoBots are pluggable capabilities that assist the architecture and implementation processes using advanced reasoning.

  • External tools and information through provisioning

  • A model driven provisioning layer that transforms external systems, architectures and information into and out of the metadata infrastructure.
  • A web server to manage the access to the architecture repository from browsers as well as external metadata clients using web services
  • An eclipse UI layer supporting views of the integrated OsEra architectures.

Related Work & Resources

Closed SubProjects

  • Under construction