The Estonian Semantic Interoperability Framework Building a Better e-State through Collaboration Dr. Peep Küngas University of Tartu SOA Trader, Ltd.

Abstract of the presentation (0:15) Estonian semantic interoperability framework aims at providing a unified view to heterogeneous data structures and services in nation-wide and pan-European settings. In order to support this aim the framework outlines standards such as XSD, WSDL, OWL and SA-WSDL to be used correspondingly for describing data structures, services, metamodels and finally, providing semantic annotations, which will ultimately lead to more effective usage of information artifacts in loosely coupled systems with respect to semantic interoperability. An online tool for collaborative creation and management of particular metamodels and semantic annotations has been released for supporting creation of interlinked artifacts complying to this set of standards.

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Burning Money “For each dollar spent on applications, roughly $5-$9 is spent on integration, accounting for roughly 40% of IT budgets” – Deutsche Bank Securities (February 2005) “Over 40% of the cost of integration today is spent in application-specific code to manually reconcile and validate the inconsistent data exchanged between disparate applications, resulting in a tight coupling of systems” – Progress (February 2008)

Problems Difficult to locate suitable data services – Too many data services available – The amount of data services increases constantly Detection of integration points is expensive – Based on human-readable documentation Difficult to integrate selected data services – Poor documentation – Documentation in different languages – Different semantics and structure of data objects Data redundancy – Difficulties in maintaining data – Data integrity, consistency etc issues 6

Regulations Since July registration of semantic descriptions is mandatory for new IS development projects Responsibility of service providers and registry owners Collected semantic descriptions – Annotations of Web services interfaces (only X-Road services) – Annotations of collected data (registries only) Semantic descriptions published at RIHA (

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Dirk Krafzig, Karl Banke, and Dirk Slama. Enterprise SOA. Prentice Hall, 2005

Standards Semantika- varade loomine ja haldamine WSDLXSD SA- WSDL OWLXMIBPMN? 9

Creation of Semantic Annotations Manage ontologies and semantic annotations Remove anomalies in ontologies Extend ontologies Update SA-WSDL references Annotate XML schemas Analyse XML schema element and attribute names Group XML schema elements according to their semantics Add SA-WSDL references to XML schema elements Ceate ontology Review existing ontologies for potential reuse Determine essential concepts Create/adjust taxonomies Add properties 10

Required Competence in Semantic Interoperability Projects Semantic assets Integrator Usage of knowledge Domain expert Domain specific knowledge Knowledge engineer Knowledge representation 11

X-Road Case Study X-Road Information Systems58 Data Services1 045 Data Fields SCC 2009, Bangalore, India Dataset is available at:

Pilot Projects Primary (foundational) ontologies – Addresses, geoinfo, legal persons, natural persons – The ontologies will cover about 80% of concepts required for semantic annotations Secondary ontologies – Health insurance, e-Health, … Information Systems – Business Registry, Population Registry, Land Cadastre, Address Data System, e-Health systems, …

Analyzing Data Redundancy Where to get data about household’s habitat? Why is data about board members of companies collected in registry X and Y? Which data is simultaneously managed in several registries?

Modularity of Data Services How well are existing data services reusable?

Other Applications Finding data sources more effectively – Preparing for electronic census Monitoring handling of delicate personal data of residents Developing strategies for data collection and maintenance Analysing information diffusion between governmental organizations

THANK YOU! 17