Ontology Requirements for SOA December 11, 2007 By: James Odell and Harsh Sharma, OMG SOA SIG Co-Chairs

2 Vocabulary or Taxonomy or Ontology? Ontology of Domain specific Services Need for SOA Taxonomy -- and Ontology Some food for thought/action items Agenda

Vocabulary or Taxonomy or an Ontology? OO, Information Models (Class Diagrams, Conceptual, Logical, Physical, Dimensional Models, XML Schema Models…) Taxonomy A structured collection of Terms, generally hierarchical, that is used for both classification and navigation Ontology -Ontologies use richer semantic Relationships among Terms and Attributes, as well as strict rules about how to specify Terms and Relationships - Because Ontologies do more than just control a vocabulary, they are thought of as knowledge representation Can be used by people, with emphasis on machine interpretability to exchange domain information Vocabulary Business and/or IT Terms and associated Rules written in Natural Language, understood across the enterprise, partners, customers.… Bottom line: A good Vocabulary can lead to better Ontologies

Do we need Service Taxonomy & Ontology? Service Taxonomy  Coupled with a Vocabulary of Terms, a Service Taxonomy can facilitate common understanding of Services available (described in Natural Language) across ‘Consumers’ and ‘Providers’ of Services  Help explain to business stakeholders what Services are available to support given Business Processes A Service Ontology may:  Enable discovery and execution of Services by ‘Software Agents’ resulting in further automation of SOA based platforms (machine interpretation is a key feature)  A Service Taxonomy could be a precursor of a formal Service Ontology For automation (Straight Through Processing -STP) and scalability of SOA Event, Process and ‘domain’ Ontologies are equally relevant

OMG Activity/Interest around SOA and Domain Ontologies SOA SIG members looking to work with other WGs to develop Ontology of Services OMG Insurance WG is looking to define ‘Business Services’ for Insurance  Leverage SOA Ontology  Developing Business Vocabulary and Ontology of Property and Casualty Insurance  Support Claim management capability OMG Life Sciences WG looking to develop Service & Process Ontologies Decision management for candidate drug Targets Reasoning engines to use standard ontologies for Gene Expression/Proteomics research OMG Healthcare DTF in partnership with HL-7 defining Services for Healthcare ( )

SOA Overview Technical Service Portfolio ComponentsResourcesESB Business Service Portfolio Orchestrations Business Processes Business Goals ! ? → Business Rules F F F F F F Business Services Technical Services (Diagram adapted from Proforma Corp) 6

Where is Ontology needed for SOA? Architecture view Service Description Model Service Visibility Model Interacting with Services Model Policies and Contracts Model Governance Model … Business view Stakeholders and Participants Model Needs and Capabilities Model Resources Model Social Structure Model …

OASIS - Service Description Model For SOA to enable efficient connectivity between providers and consumers, descriptions must provide sufficient information to achieve visibility between the provider and consumer and to support continued interaction.

OASIS - Service Visibility Model SOA participants need to visible to each other using whatever means are appropriate. OASIS analyses visibility in terms of awareness, willingness, and reachability.

W3C WSA - Interacting with Services (with agents) W3C, Web Services Architecture, W3C Working Group Note, February 11, OASIS, Reference Model for Service Oriented Architecture 1.0, Committee Specification 1, August 2, open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=soa-rm 10

A bidding phase establishes a “contract” between a requester and provider. Call for proposal Bid / (no bid) Award / (no award) Confirm / (decline) Proceed (abort) Provider Requester Example: “Contract Net” Interaction Protocol

W3C WSA - The Service-Oriented Perspective 12

OASIS - Policies and Contracts Policy - a constraint or condition on the use, deployment, or description of an owned entity as defined by any participant. Contract - Agreements on policies between participants.

OASIS - SOA Governance Decisions that are pertinent to the adoption, use and evolution of an SOA are arrived at and who has the decision rights to make such decisions.

OASIS - Stakeholders and Participants 15

OASIS - Needs and Capabilities 16 Capability - A resource that may be used by a service provider to achieve a real world effect on behalf of a service consumer. Need - A need is a measurable requirement that a service participant is actively seeking to satisfy. The aspects of a need are that it can be measured and that it belongs to a participant.

OASIS - Resources Model A resource is any entity of some perceived value, where the value may be in the function it performs or something intrinsic in its nature.

OASIS - Managing Resources Model Management is the control of the use, configuration, and availability of resources in accordance with the policies of the stakeholders involved.

Install Transformer Pull Cable Test Install Poles Dig Holes Poles Trans- former Cable Post Hole Digger Post Installer Cable Puller Post Hole Worker Installer Worker Cable Worker Transformer Installer Tester Delivery Truck Example Process 19

GPSC Existing applications and databases I2... SAP NA Oracle NA SAP EU Oracle EU Part #123 Acme Corp Shipping cost Part #123 Widget, Inc Packaging cost Part #123 Widget, Inc Tariff Part #994 Widget, Inc Container cost EDI, Web Service, SOA, EDA, EAI, … enabled by adapters NetManage, Web Services, … Resource Instance Resource Type 0..*1..* classified instance resource classifier Resource Instance Relationship Resource Type Relationship subtype composition dependency connection substitution suggestion compatibility constraints … composition connection substitution compatibility constraints … relation 0..* parent Ontology driven with adaptive source mapping

OASIS - Social Structure Model A social structure (sometimes identified as social institutions) embodies some of the cultural aspects that characterize the relationships and actions among a group of participants.

Some food for thought/action items OMG SOA SIG, Insurance WG looking to partner with Ontology, BPM (and other interested WGs inside and outside OMG) experts  Establish a team of experts to: Provide guidance on relevant standards, naming conventions, formats (XMI, RDF, OWL…??) and managing ontologies Develop Best Practices/Policy document for Ontology development  Repository of Taxonomies and Ontolgies to promote reuse and avoid redundant work A Library of ‘Reference Ontologies’ like Time, Currency, Exchange Codes that could be used elsewhere to facilitate a modular design  Common modules and domain specific to speed up development Repository also accessible via a web front-end to facilitate discovery of available Ontologies Repository to provide additional interfaces to upload, retrieve Ontologies

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