1. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 1 The EDM Council Semantics Repository: Building global consensus for the Financial Services Industry Mike Bennett Hypercube Limited 89 Worship Street, London EC2A 2BF www.hypercube.co.uk

2. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 2 Summary EDM Council Repository requirements How we met those requirements A look at the Repository Upper Ontology considerations Principles Going Forward

3. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 3 EDM Council Repository requirements The EDM Council A non-profit trade association focussed on managing and leveraging enterprise data as a strategic asset to enable financial institutions to increase efficiency, minimize risk, and create competitive advantage Industry Requirements –Consistent terminology –Mapping of terms in disparate systems –Standard agreed set of terms –Focus on meaning not words Business management of data =business ownership of data semantics

4. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 4 Requirements Management Principles Requirements must be: –Complete and consistent –Technology neutral –Comprehensible to business –Maintainable / maintained going forward These are therefore also the requirements for business semantics representation Put business stakeholders in control of data terms and meanings

5. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 5 The Solution Use OWL for its expressive power Adapt into plain English –Things –Facts about those things –Synonyms Output into business-consumable formats –Spreadsheets (with OWL structure) –Block diagrams (Things and relationships)

6. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 6 A look at the Repository Terms are derived from existing industry standards –Reverse engineered –May contain some design features and technical definitions (to be eliminated) Arranged into sections –by financial instrument class –Securities components, dated items etc. Upper ontology is at the bottom, as Global Terms –plain English again

7. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 7 Repository Tour 1: Overview Part of Taxonomy of Financial Instruments (ISO 10962)

8. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 8 Repository Tour 1: Overview Thing Is A relation Multiple Inheritance Object Property (Relationship Fact in English)

9. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 9 Repository Tour: Spreadsheet Types of OWL feature Ranges of properties further along

10. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 10 Repository Tour Financial Securities are a Thing –Not directly attached to Thing but via Contract –Reflects the wider reality where possible So are the components –Contractual Terms –Issued Equity –etc. Things in the financial world are more specialised kinds of things in the wider world –Contracts, terms, capital, debt, parties etc. –Example: Contract

11. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 11 Repository Tour 2: Contracts Contract terms and relations

12. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 12 Repository Tour 3: Top Level

13. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 13 Principles Top level: from John F Sowas KR Ontology lattice –Philosophical Order –Continuant v Occurrent –Concrete v Abstract –Extended with parts, sets, time etc. All other classes are descended from these –Inherit from all 3 layers of the lattice Relationships also have inheritance –e.g. Share confers Voting Right specialises Contract confers Right

14. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 14 Principles: Grammar The top level things each have a number of necessary facts that are reflected in the financial industry terms –There is an Archetype of each general kind of thing e.g. Contract, Party, Process Syntax or Grammar for each thing –e.g. roles, parties, accounts equation Grammars for legal, mathematical etc. Includes process modelling primitives –these are Occurrent Things

15. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 15 Going Forward Initiating a round of industry subject matter expert reviews Would want to standardise the upper ontologies where possible –e.g. XBRL and REA for financial –emerging ontology terms e.g. Time How to integrate upper ontologies (SUMO etc.) into the same upper layer structure Will also want to move to the OMGs latest ODM metamodel and UML Profile

16. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 16 Summary Have used OWL as the basis Extended this to plain English Mechanised in a UML editing tool Output in business-reviewable formats Added structure to the upper ontology –Using John Sowas KR Lattice as framework –Defined archetypes for every kind of thing –These form a grammar of necessary properties for each class Would like to move to standard terms for the upper ontology

17. Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase 17 Questions?