In an open session "The UDEF In Depth"
on the afternoon of Wednesday October 24,
UDEF Project Chair Ron Schuldt of Lockheed Martin
presented an in-depth training module on how to use the UDEF.
The Semantic Interoperability Working Group meeting
on Thursday October 25 included discussion of the
UDEF Challenge, a joint session with the SOA Working Group
on Information Architecture for SOA, discussion of UDEF
Internationalization, and discussion of UDEF Registry Switching.
The purpose of the UDEF Challenge is to demonstrate practical
semantic interoperability through products that are based on
the UDEF. An outline architecture for a Challenge demonstration
was discussed.
The joint session with the SOA Working Group pursued the discussion
that had started the previous day in the conference Workshop on
Information Architecture for SOA. It agreed on the need for a
reference model - perhaps with similar characteristics to the 7-layer
OSI reference model - for semantic interoperability in the context of
SOA, and discussed some possible approaches.
UDEF Internationalization includes several projects whose aims are to
produce versions of the UDEF in natural languages other than English.
The most advanced of these is the Dutch project, which has produced
a draft of a complete translation of the current English version.
The draft needs substantial review before it can be published, and this
review is in progress. The German project has produced an incomplete draft.
The French project has just started its work.
Registry switching is a mechanism by which different domain-specific parts of the
UDEF can be held in different registries, with markers in the portion of the
tree held in each registry to indicate where the tree is continued in another
registry. The meeting concluded that a description of this mechanism
should be added to the definition of the UDEF.
UDEF training sessions will continue to be held at future
conferences.
The next step for the UDEF Challenge is to identify vendors that
have UDEF-enabled products and
that are prepared to commit to participating in the Challenge.
An Information Architecture Reference Model project will be
established within the Semantic Interoperability Working Group.
Progress on the different language versions of the UDEF will
continue. It is hoped to complete the review of the Dutch
version and have it ready for publication in the first quarter
of 2008. The German and French versions will follow, and other
language versions will then be developed as appropriate experts
are identified.
A formal specification of the UDEF Registry Switching mechanism
will be created.
