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This section includes the following:

Overall Process and Request for Community Input

This is the process as published on the NCI Wiki.

Goals and Objectives for the Semantic Infrastructure 2.0 Roadmap

The purpose of this document is to define the basic requirements for the next generation – that is, Version 2.0 – of caBIG®-CBIIT Semantic Infrastructure.

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The Semantic Infrastructure 2.0 Roadmap is being collectively authored by a team with extensive knowledge of the legacy caBIG® semantic infrastructure and the associated lessons learned from its use, as well as the realities of "what works and what doesn't" in the technology world as it moves to "Web 2.0" and "the semantic web." As described in the published process framework for the development of the Semantic Infrastructure 2.0 Roadmap, the goal of the project is to combine the perspectives and inputs of the Semantic Infrastructure 2.0 team of experts with caBIG® community input to provide the content for a roadmap that will guide the development of the next generation of caBIG® semantic infrastructure.

Reference Frameworks for Development of Semantic Infrastructure 2.0

With respect to the overarching technology strategies being adopted to guide the development of Semantic Infrastructure 2.0, there are several "givens:"

Support for legacy semantics as currently represented in caDSR via ISO 11179: It is critical that the semantics currently represented in caDSR and EVS be supported in the Semantic Infrastructure 2.0. However, it is equally important that both current and future caBIG® stakeholders understand that as users of the Semantic Infrastructure 2.0, the underlying representation of legacy semantics may – and in fact will – be markedly different in the Semantic Infrastructure 2.0 compared to the legacy semantic infrastructure. One of the primary responsibilities of the Semantic Infrastructure 2.0 Roadmap is to specifically identify and describe prototypes for strategies and tools which will be required to both migrate existing semantic content into the Semantic Infrastructure 2.0 as well as support external semantic infrastructures which may be based on representational approaches that differ from those being adopted by the Semantic Infrastructure 2.0.

Semantically-Aware Service-Oriented Architecture (sSOA)

Both the Semantic Infrastructure 2.0 and caGrid 2.0 will be developed and deployed within the context of an overarching approach to enterprise architecture which uses the distributed computing design paradigm commonly referred to as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). In addition, because of the fundamental importance of semantics in any architecture approach in the context of the life sciences and healthcare (in the broadest sense of those terms), the SOA being developed by NCI CBIIT as manifested in the Semantic Infrastructure 2.0 and caGrid 2.0, is referred to as a "semantically-aware SOA" (sSOA). It is beyond the scope of this document to discuss in detail the various benefits and goals, core organizing motivations, or fundamental design principles of SOA. However, the following bullet points summarize each of these topics. Interested readers can refer to a number of references including two texts by Thomas Erl: "Principles of Service Design" and "SOA Design Patterns."

Organizing Principles of SOA

• Business-driven
• Vendor-neutral
• Enterprise-centric
• Composition-centric

Benefits and Goals of SOA

• Intrinsic interoperability
• Increased federation
• Increased business and technology alignment
• Increased vendor-diversification options
• Increased IT ROI
• Decreased IT burden
• Increased organizational agility

SOA Design Principles

• Standard Service Contracts
• Service Loose Coupling
• Service Abstraction
• Service Reusability
• Service Autonomy
• Service Statelessness
• Service Discoverability
• Service Composability

Services-Aware Interoperability Framework (SAIF)

The Semantic Infrastructure 2.0 is in large part the operational support for the metadata defined in the CBIIT implementation guide for the HL7 Services-Aware Interoperability Framework (SAIF). Readers interested in the specifics of the metadata defined by the CBIIT SAIF implementation guide should consult that document. In particular, the chapter on the Enterprise Conformance and Compliance Framework (ECCF) provides focal point for the definition and representation of the collective set of informational and behavioral metadata which the Semantic Infrastructure 2.0 will support at both design- and run-time (via the caGrid 2.0 platform.)

Relationship of the Semantic Infrastructure 2.0 to caGrid 2.0

The project to define the Roadmap for version 2 of the caBIG® semantic infrastructure, that is, the "next generation" of the current caDSR and EVS semantic infrastructure is being conducted in parallel with and is fundamentally coordinated with the caGrid 2.0 Roadmap project. The ultimate goal of the two efforts is to produce two complementary but integrated Roadmaps that will enable caGrid 2.0 to provide expanded semantic processing capabilities (when required) including but not limited to run-time service discovery and resolution of semantic queries. Details of both the Semantic Infrastructure 2.0 Roadmap and the caGrid 2.0 Roadmap, will be publicly available and open for community input.

Expectations and Guidelines for Review and Feedback

This is the first working draft and is expected to evolve with each release.