5.3.3 - Runtime Contract Discovery

Identify semantically similar data elements

Gap Analysis::Discover::013 - Identify semantically similar data elements

semanticAlignment

Improve searching for “best” CDE version

Gap Analysis::Discover::048 - Improve searching for best CDE version

queryBestCdeVersion

There is a need for users to upload/download sets and concurrently compare to existing registry elements for semantic similarities

Gap Analysis::HL7 CIC::CIC-10 - Compare data elements for semantic similarities

semanticAlignment

Service Oriented Architecture is an architectural paradigm for organizing and utilizing distributed capabilities that may be under the control of different ownership domains. Consequently, it is important that organizations that plan to engage in service interactions adopt governance policies and procedures sufficient to ensure that there is standardization across both internal and external organizational boundaries to promote the effective creation and use of SOA-based services. SOA governance requires numerous architectural capabilities on the Semantic Infrastructure: Governance is expressed through policies and assumes multiple use of focused policy modules that can be employed across many common circumstances This is elaborated in the inherited Policy profile. Governance requires that the participants understand the intent of governance, the structures created to define and implement governance, and the processes to be followed to make governance operational. This is provided by capabilities specialized from the inherited Management Profile. Governance policies are made operational through rules and regulations. This is provided by the following capabilities, most of which are specializations of the inherited Artifact Profile: * descriptions to enable the rules and regulations to be visible, where the description includes a unique identifier and a sufficient, and preferably a machine process-able, representation of the meaning of terms used to describe the rules and regulations; * one or more discovery mechanisms that enable searching for rules and regulations that may apply to situations corresponding to the search criteria specified by the service participant; where the discovery mechanism will have access to the individual descriptions of rules and regulations, possibly through some repository mechanism; * accessible storage of rules and regulations and their respective descriptions, so service participants can understand and prepare for compliance, as defined. * SOA services to access automated implementations of the Governance Processes. Governance implies management to define and enforce rules and regulations.. This is elaborated in the inherited Management profile. Governance relies on metrics to define and measure compliance. This is elaborated in the inherited Metric profile.

Semantic Profile::OASIS SOA::Governance Model

monitor from inherited abstract profile Metricsmetrics from inherited abstract profile Metricsdiscovery from inherited abstract profile Artifactidentity from inherited abstract profile Artifactmetadata from inherited abstract profile Artifactstore from inherited abstract profile Artifact

The Web Service Execution Environment (WSMX) is an environment that is designed to allow dynamic mediation, selection and invocation of web services. For the purposes of the Semantic Infrastructure roadmap, the WSMX specification has been abstracted to be applicable to any SOA environment, and to mediation of any artifact. A range of different models or ontologies describing the same or related problem domains could be created by different entities throughout the world. This implies that more and more systems and applications require mediation in order to be able to integrate and use heterogeneous data sources. Mapping between models is required in several classes of application, such as Information Integration and Semantic Web, Data Migration or Ontology Merging. Unfortunately, there is always a trade-off between how accurate these mappings are and the degree of automation that can be offered. There are approaches able to provide these kinds of mappings (also known as alignments) between different schemas or ontologies using machine learning techniques in an automatic manner but only with limited accuracy. In order to rule out the false results, the domain expert has to validate and check the mappings or the alignment at the end of the process. Another type of approach considers the human intervention from the beginning, proposing an interactive mapping process where the tool suggestions and the human user validations alternate in the process until the final result is achieved. The mediation solution presented in this roadmap follows the second approach described above: we propose well-defined strategies and methodologies for the mapping process in order to guarantee - the most correct and complete mappings possible, together with a set of algorithms and strategies meant to make the mapping task much easier (reducing it to simple validations and choices). We adopted this approach because we believe that in the context of SOA Services and business transactions the transformations on data must be 100% accurate. In addition, we consider that an interactive approach towards mapping creation is much more appropriate in the case of medium/large ontologies and also when the intention is to abstract the domain expert (using a graphical interface) from the underlying logical formalism used to represent the mappings. There are four types of heterogeneities that can occur within the SOA. Each heterogeneity type requires a specific technique for mismatch resolution, referred to as levels of mediation: * Terminology: Services or other resources use different terminologies; e.g. one entity understands name to be the full name of a person, and another one defines name to only denote the family name. This can hamper successful interoperation on the semantic level, i.e. concerning the meaning of information. * Representation Format and Transfer Protocol: resources that interact use different formats or languages for information representation (e.g. HTML, XML, RDF, OWL, etc.), or different protocols for information transfer (e.g. HTTP, RPC, etc.); incompatibilities on this level obviously can hamper prosperous information interchange. * Functionality: specific to services, this refers to functionalities of a provider and a requester that do not match exactly. This enforces complex and thus expensive reasoning procedures for detecting services usable for a given request; the need for such expensive operations can be reduced by gaining and utilizing knowledge on the functional heterogeneities * Business Process: also specific to services, this denotes mismatches in the supported interaction behavior of services and clients. This can hamper successful interaction on a behavioral level for consumption or interaction of services. The process of mediation generally consists of three main steps: * the creation of mappings,based on model artifacts. * the creation of appropriate mapping rules, based on model artifacts in conjunction with references to instances. Since the execution environment includes the Semantic Infrastructure, all mediated models conform to the SI meta-meta-model. * the execution of the mapping rules, which acts on the instance data taking as input source instances and having as output the target, mediated, instances Service message exchanges are represented in terms of the sender's models, and each of the business partners (e.g. enterprises) understands only messages expressed in terms of its own model. One of the roles of the execution environment (by mean of mediation), is to transform, if necessary, the received message from the terms of sender's model into the terms of the receiver's model, before sending it further. From the perspective of the models, each message contains instances of the source model that have to be transformed into instances of the target model. WSMX distinguishes four different types of mediators : * mediators that link two goals. This link represents the refinement of the source goal into the target goal * data mediators that import models and resolve possible representation mismatches between models. * mediators that link web service to goals, meaning that the web service (totally or partially) fulfils the goal to which it is linked. The mediators may explicitly state the difference between the two entities and map different vocabularies (through the use of data Mediators). * mediators linking two Web Services.

Semantic Profile::OASIS Semantic SOA::Mediation

mappingDefinition from inherited abstract profile MediationmappingRules from inherited abstract profile MediationmappingExecution from inherited abstract profile Mediation

A service description is an artifact, usually document-based, that defines or references the information needed to use, deploy, manage and otherwise control a service. This includes not only the information and behavior models associated with a service to define the service interface but also includes information needed to decide whether the service is appropriate for the current needs of the service consumer. Thus, the service description will also include information such as service reachability, service functionality, and the policies and contracts associated with a service. A service description artifact may be a single document or it may be an interlinked set of documents. Architectural implications of service description on the Semantic Infrastructure are reflected in the following functional decomposition: * Description will change over time and its contents will reflect changing needs and context. This is elaborated in the inherited Change profile. * Description makes use of defined semantics, where the semantics may be used for categorization or providing other property and value information for description classes. This is elaborated in the inherited Semantic Model profile. * Descriptions include reference to policies defining conditions of use and optionally contracts representing agreement on policies and other conditions. This is elaborated in the inherited Policy profile. * Descriptions include references to metrics which describe the operational characteristics of the subjects being described. This is elaborated in the inherited Metrics profile. * Descriptions of the interactions are important for enabling auditability and repeatability, thereby establishing a context for results and support for understanding observed change in performance or results. This is elaborated in the inherited Interaction profile. * Descriptions may capture very focused information subsets or can be an aggregate of numerous component descriptions. Service description is an example of a likely aggregate for which manual maintenance of all aspects would not be feasible. This is elaborated in the inherited Composition profile. * Descriptions provide up-to-date information on what a resource is, the conditions for interacting with the resource, and the results of such interactions. As such, the description is the source of vital information in establishing willingness to interact with a resource, reachability to make interaction possible, and compliance with relevant conditions of use. This is elaborated in the inherited Interoperability profile. Policy capabilities are specialization of Artifact capabilities.

Semantic Profile::OASIS SOA::Service Description Model

discovery from inherited abstract profile Artifactidentity from inherited abstract profile Artifactmetadata from inherited abstract profile Artifactstore from inherited abstract profile Artifactmonitor from inherited abstract profile Metricsmetrics from inherited abstract profile MetricsmetricsDiscovery from inherited abstract profile MetricscomplianceDiscovery from inherited abstract profile MetricsinteroperabilityDiscovery from inherited abstract profile InteroperabilityserviceChangeNotification from inherited abstract profile Interoperability

One of the key requirements for participants interacting with each other in the context of a SOA is achieving visibility: before services can interoperate, the participants have to be visible to each other using whatever means are appropriate. The Reference Model analyzes visibility in terms of awareness, willingness, and reachability. Visibility in a SOA ecosystem has the following architectural implications on mechanisms providing support for awareness, willingness, and reachability: Mechanisms providing support for awareness will likely have the following minimum capabilities: * creation of Description, preferably conforming to a standard Description format and structure; * publishing of Description directly to a consumer or through a third party mediator; * discovery of Description, preferably conforming to a standard for Description discovery; * notification of Description updates or notification of the addition of new and relevant Descriptions; * classification of Description elements according to standardized classification schemes. In a SOA ecosystem with complex social structures, awareness may be provided for specific communities of interest. The architectural mechanisms for providing awareness to communities of interest will require support for: * policies that allow dynamic formation of communities of interest; * trust that awareness can be provided for and only for specific communities of interest, the bases of which is typically built on keying and encryption technology. The architectural mechanisms for determining willingness to interact will require support for: * verification of identity and credentials of the provider and/or consumer; * access to and understanding of description; * inspection of functionality and capabilities; * inspection of policies and/or contracts. The architectural mechanisms for establishing reachability will require support for: * the location or address of an endpoint; * verification and use of a service interface by means of a communication protocol; * determination of presence with an endpoint which may only be determined at the point interaction but may be further aided by the use of a presence protocol for which the endpoints actively participate.

Semantic Profile::OASIS SOA::Service Visibility Model

discovery from inherited abstract profile Artifact