Mission

The mission of the Semantic Interoperability Working Group is to enable semantic interoperability on a global scale by fostering the development and takeup of vendor-neutral semantic interoperability standards, best practices, and technologies. This will be accomplished by producing deliverables that prove semantic interoperability is real today, and demonstrating how it can add business value.

Background

Information architecture is a key component of enterprise architecture. According to industry sources, between 40% and 80% of application integration effort is spent on  resolving semantic issues. Semantic interoperability is therefore crucial for achieving Boundaryless Information FlowTM within an enterprise architecture.

Service-Oriented Architecture is a style of enterprise architecture that provides enterprise agility, and can make enterprise information available throughout the enterprise as needed, delivering Boundaryless Information FlowTM. But this implies that resources, including software services and human resources, must process information of different kinds, represented in different ways, and including both structured and unstructured data. That is, it requires Semantic Interoperability.

The need for Semantic Interoperability will become still greater if current expectations are realised for how SOA will develop, in combination with Web 2.0, and how enterprises will develop, with externalization of information.

Today, semantic interoperability problems are solved on a bilateral basis, and typically require substantial human intervention. The Working Group's vision is that they should be solved on a multi-lateral basis, and with the people taken out of the loop.

Objectives

1. Develop a common understanding of types of semantic conflict.
2. Identify means based on open standards to resolve those conflicts.
3. Describe how enterprise architecture can cater for different kinds of information, both structured and unstructured, and support strategies for their interoperation, in a way that could be included in a future version of TOGAF.

Work Program

UDEFThe UDEF Project will continue to pursue its Charter under the leadership of Ron Schuldt. The realization of this effort is to establish the UDEF as part of the big Semantic picture.Semantics and SOASOA is being treated as the enablement platform of the future. If SOA is about integration at the syntactic level, Semantic Technology will provide that next level of interoperability.Vocabulary ManagementThe understanding of vocabulary is integral in the success of Semantic technology, in order to make Semantic technology real in the enterprise the processes, governance and tools around semantic technology, need to be furthered.Semantics and TOGAF Information ArchitectureThis project will work on the integration of Semantic technology in the Open Group Architecture Framework.Semantic Framework and Reference ModelThis project will produce an analysis of types of semantic conflict, and identify important semantic standards.