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The section will provide an assessment of the gap between the roadmap and existing tools and platform.

Existing NCI Semantic Infrastructure

The NCI semantic infrastructure currently consists of a suite of tools aimed at terminological curation of models submitted as UML XMI files for semi-automated annotation, terminology services for concept lookup and codesystem browsing, and basic terminology and ontological relationships in the NCI Thesaurus and Metathesuarus. This bundle of infrastructure applications are termed caCORE (Cancer Common Ontologic Representation Environment).

caCORE tools and APIs are developed by the National Cancer Institute Center for Bioinformatics and Information Technology (NCI CBIIT) to provide the building blocks for development of interoperable information management systems. This suite of tools has helped to enable interoperability and data sharing from the scientific bench to the clinical bedside and back in the current SI.

caCORE includes the following key components:

EVS (Enterprise Vocabulary Services) for hosting and managing vocabulary.
caDSR (Cancer Data Standards Registry and Repository) for hosting and managing metadata.
caCORE SDK, the GUI-based caCORE Workbench, and associated tools for model-driven software engineering of systems which can be easily integrated with caGrid.

EVS and the caDSR database and tools are the current basis of the semantic foundation for interoperable data and analytical services at NCI. caDSR is based on the ISO 11179 Part 3 metadata standard.

Developers use caCORE components to create "caCORE-like" systems. By definition these systems have object-oriented information models registered in caDSR whose meaning is linked to EVS vocabularies, and have open, public APIs and web services to provide access to the data. The caBIO data service is an example of a caCORE-like system developed using caCORE components.

Using caCORE tools, developers adapt and build applications that are caBIG® compatible, that is, interoperable with other caBIG® tools.

caCore tools include the following:

Additionally the caCore includes the caCore workbench.

The caCORE Workbench is a tool with a graphical user interface (GUI) to facilitate the creation of a caBIG® silver or gold compliant system. The caCORE Workbench acts as a process guide and an integrated platform, enabling the user to more readily create a Data or Analytical service on the Grid. The following caBIG® process workflows are supported:

Creation of a UML Model (ArgoUML, Enterprise Architect)
Semantic integration (SIW, CDE Browser, UML Model Browser, Curation Tool)
Model mapping (caAdapter)
Application creation and deployment (SDK)
Creation of a grid service (Introduce)

Proposed Features in the SIV2 Roadmap

The proposed SIV2 is meant to provide a means of fully supporting the existing NCI Semantic Infrastructure while providing a means of ongoing transformation of the existing artifacts and creation of equivalent tooling to support all current functionality of the SI. The major

The SIV2 extends the current functionality of the Semantic Infrastructure by adding the following functionality:

A new means of assessing conformance of artifacts and applications to improve software development and semantic consistency
A semantically linked artifact repository for easy discovery of the registry contents
A metadata repository that links to the artifact repository
A cross artifacts editing dashboard that allows model artifacts to be linked to other artifacts such as terminology value sets
A rules engine for operatiing on the artifact repository and metadata repository to enable dynamic annotation and the comparison of artifacts
A reasoning platform that executes inferencing and links to rule engines enbaling the discovery of implicit information rather than soley explicit information
Introduction of additional semantic modeling standards (ISO 21090, HL7 RIM, Semantic Web Languages (OWL, RDF)) in order to handle the broad requirements of enabling simpler query functions and enriched data discovery
A more automated artifact governance platform that includes the ability for community input to governace decisions
Mutiple model transformation tools and APIs
Tools for authoring standards compliant artifacts including schemas, models, and terminology value sets
Tools for authoring forms using the new semantic models in order to meet the demands of customers who require these to meet meaningful use requirements and who want full semantics for data aggregation and discovery
Broad use of Model Driven Architecture technologies
Close integration with caGRID 2.0

h.5 The table below shows a high level view of the gaps between what the current semantic infrastructure provides and what the Semantic Infrastructure Version 2 will provide for several use case driven functionalities.

Requirement	SIV1	SIV2	Gap closed by SIV2
Retrieve any artifact	CDE	Domain models, Logical models, terminology, documents, forms, behavioral models an specifications	Ability to retrieve any artifact in context
Manage artifacts	CDE Curator only	Open to all	Ability for anyone to annotate an artifact and submit to governance
Service discovery	Constrained to service discovery on the GRID	Service discovery tied to artifacts that can link to data provision	Ability to discover a service, its links to other services, the service contract, the artifacts that are behind the service
Bench to Bedside Form creation	Clinical research form creation	Form creation of any healthcare, clinical research, or life science form	Supports all form users and conforms to ONC requirements for meaningful use forms
Decision support across artifacts	None	Semantic linkage across multiple artifacts, inference of implicit knowledge about the artifacts and their relations	Provides enhanced search and retrieval of artifacts and extends the metadata for any artifact through inference of relations
Conformance Testing	None	Semantic reasoning and inference with automated classification, relations, and traceability of artifacts	Provides the full traceability and conformance testing for artifacts in a standard (ECCF) framework
Data discovery	?	Semantic inference, semantic to relational adaptors and scalable relation graphs relate services to artifacts, artifacts to terminology, and terminology to data	Provides the ability to link services to each other and to the explicit definitions of the data they provide