Cross Domain Semantic Interoperability Working Group

A SICoP Subgroup -- (Formerly the Common Upper Ontology WG)

Paper now released: Data Interoperability across the Enterprise - Why Current Technology Can't Achieve it.

Mission

• To make the case that current technology (XML, metadata, RDF, OWL, stand-alone ontologies, etc.) cannot achieve data interoperability across the enterprise.
• To organize and seek resources for multiple independent projects to mature and demonstrate the technologies to enable semantic interoperability amongst Domains, Communities of Interest (COI), or any independently developed systems.

Candidate Technical Solutions

• Ontology Mapping and Linking (Semantic Web approach).
• Single upper ontology. Examples:SUMO, DOLCE, OpenCyc, BFO
• Set of mapped upper ontologies: See UpperOntologySummit Joint Communiqué

Enabling Technologies (that need to be matured, demonstrated, and piloted)

• How to deal with overlapping and proliferation of Communities of Interest and Domains
• How to achieve interoperability amongst legacy systems.
• Metrics for Semantic Interoperability -- So we know what we have and how much we're improving it
• Existing state-of-the-art technologies need to demonstrated, with results fully and openly published.
• Utilization of existing upper ontologies.
• Establish a testbed or distributed testbed, open for all to monitor and interface with.
• Map two or more upper ontologies and evaluate feasibility of achieving semantic interoperability
• How to utilize partial Semantic Interoperability where perfect interoperability cannot practically be achieved.
• ...more to be added...

Out of Scope

• 'Semantic Technologies' are being worked by others and are outside the specific scope of this working group. This group will focus on how systems from different domains or COIs can all interoperate, without domain-to-domain mappings (which is an n-squared problem). The success of our mission clearly depends on these other technologies, but we will leave these topics to others, so we focus on our specific mission.

How to Participate (Open to all)

• Monitor this site for updates
• Subscribe/unsubscribe to email discussion list (We're still using the cuo-wg@colab.cim3.net discussion list for now.)
• Read past emails from CUO-WG discussion list
• Join writing team to draft the group's defining paper.
• Contact POC below to discuss participation.
• Conference calls announced on this site and via the email discussion list.
• Note: Physical meetings are not anticipated

Working Group Members

• Add your name below by creating a login account (see upper right login link) and then edit this page, or email POC below. (Note: When you create an account, you have to wait about an hour to receive email notification.)(35C7)

• JamesSchoening
• NancyFaget
• MikeHieb
• AdamPease
• PatrickCassidy
• Terry D. Faber
• AllanTerry
• PeterYim
• RoyRoebuck
• GaryBerg-Cross
• CoryCasanave
• AntoinetteArsic
• DarrellWoelk
• BradCox
• WebbRoberts
• Adrian Walker
• John Flynn
• Mala Mehrotra
• Todd Schneider
• Joe Rockmore
• Chung Hee Hwang
  

• There are 46 members subscribed to the discussion list, but only some have added their names to the list above.

Past Deliverables

• Briefing to US Federal CIO Council, Architecture and Infrastructure Committee (AIC)(including John Gilligan, Air Force CIO and Kim Nelson, EPA CIO) 8 Dec 2004

Past Conference Call Notes:

• Minutes: SICoP/CUOwg_ConferenceCall_2004_11_18
• Minutes: Re-Kick-Off Conference Call Nov 13, 2006
• Minutes: Conference Call Dec 20, 2006

Related Links

• Former Wiki site for this group (For Common Upper Ontology WG)
• IEEE P1600.1 Standard Upper Ontology Working Group
• IEEE SUO WG Preliminary Evaluation of upper ontologies
• Upper Ontology Summit
• Toward the Use of an Upper Ontology for U.S. Government and U.S. Military Domains: An Evaluation, September 2004, Salim K. Semy, Mary K. Pulvermacher, and Leo J. Obrst
• DoD 8320.02-G Guidance for Implementing Net-Centric Data Sharing

Questions

• Please contact Jim Schoening at james.schoening@us.army.mil or 732-532-5812 with questions or suggestions.