NCI Enterprise Vocabulary Services (EVS) provides controlled vocabulary that is the semantic base for caCORE, CORE infrastructure, and caBIG_^® tools and collaborations. EVS is a project of the National Cancer Institute Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (NCI CBIIT). EVS activities include terminology development, terminology licensing, software development and licensing, and operations support. Projects center on development and maintenance of vocabulary and servers.

Vocabulary Projects

EVS develops and provides operations support for two broadly used vocabulary sources for cancer research: the NCI Thesaurus (NCIt), a cancer-focused terminology, and the NCI Metathesaurus (Meta), a mapping of concepts to terms in multiple vocabularies.

EVS also conducts the Biomedical Grid Terminology (BiomedGT) project to enlist participation in developing an open, federated ontology for translational research. EVS has developed tools to support collaborative community-based ontology development, and is actively seeking subject matter experts from across biomedicine as contributors to BiomedGT.

EVS develops the NCI Bioportal version of NCBO's Bioportal as the terminology browser for EVS/caCORE 4.x and LexEVS 4.2 and higher.

In addition, EVS licenses and serves third party terminology as needed to meet NCI and caBIG_^® requirements and creates and improves tools for vocabulary development, curation and deployment. From its beginning, EVS has sought to address the broad spectrum of terminology needs at NCI.

Vocabulary Servers and APIs

LexEVS 5.0 is the next generation of EVS Enterprise Vocabulary Services (EVS). In this release, the LexBIG Java API and LexGrid model become the EVS interfaces, replacing the EVS API and the EVS 3.2 model. Release highlights and release notes are available. Because adoption of the LexEVS terminology server is a major change for EVS users, NCI CBIIT is continuing to operate the previous EVS/caCORE 4.x server. The caCORE 3.x APIs and EVS 3.x Grid services will be retired. Refer to the retirement announcement for details.

The underlying software code, object model, use cases, and user documentation are available for use under an open-source license. Developers are encouraged visit the EVS download page for the relevant files and licensing information.

The following Enterprise Architect example files are available.

• Enterprise Architect generated HTML version
• EVS Enterprise Architect EAP File
• EVS XMI Model File

  Availability of earlier releases

  Files from caCORE EVS version 4.1.x, 4.0, 3.2.1, 3.1, 3.0.1.4, 3.0.1.3, 3.0.1, 3.0 are made available for download from the EVS Archives. Note that the 4.x license terms still apply.
  The EVS Grid Service 1.0 (pointing to the caCORE 3.1 EVS Services) is still available. It will be decommissioned with next major release of the LexEVS (v5.0). Therefore, the EVS Team encourages migration to the LexEVS Grid Service (v4.2) at minimum. As of the 4.1 Release of the EVS Grid Service, the service is no longer part of the caGrid infrastructure and has been deployed as a separate unit. For access to the EVS 4.1 Grid Service, visit the EVS Archives. Note that the 4.x license terms still apply.