Semantic Interoperability Working Group

Objective of Meeting

The use of controlled vocabularies is emerging as a key technique in enterprise architecture. The aims of this meeting of The Open Group's Semantic Interoperability Working Group were to:

• Explore the role of controlled vocabularies and the use of the Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF) to support them
• Agree on the overall principles for the use of controlled vocabularies
• Agree on the charter for a project to define the extensions to the UDEF that will be needed to support the linked enterprise and industry vocabularies that are expected to emerge over the next five years

Summary

Arnold Van Overeem, the Acting Chair of the Semantic Interoperability Working Group, opened the meeting and gave a presentation explaining his proposal for Distributed UDEF.

Ron Schuldt, UDEF project chair, described how Distributed UDEF could apply and gave examples in particular vertical industry areas.

Chris Harding, The Open Group Forum Director for Semantic Interoperability, gave a presentation on the role of controlled vocabularies and standards to support them.

The meeting then discussed the ideas in these three presentations, and in particular:

• Overall principles for semantic interoperability, and principles for Distributed UDEF
• Development of a White Paper to explain the context of UDEF and its relation to other standards
• Vendor-specific data model pre-integration
• The charter of the proposed Distributed UDEF project

The key points of this discussion were embodied in a presentation.

The final session of the meeting was joined by a number of external participants via a teleconference link. The presentation developed in the earlier sessions was given in this final session for review and feedback. The review and feedback points were then added to the presentation to form the output of the meeting.

Outputs

The meeting produced a presentation consisting of slides presented in the final teleconference session plus a slide showing the feedback received during that session.

Next Steps

The next steps are to:

• Develop and publish the White Paper on the use of controlled vocabularies and the role of the UDEF
• Constitute the Distributed UDEF project, and start working to achieve its objectives

Links

See above.