Federated Information Management with OWL/RDF/SPARQL

Tony Vachino – tvachino@spryinc.comTodd Jones – tjones@spryinc.com

Feb. 17, 2011

Enterprises are made up of many domains within domains

• Sales, Operations, R&D, Executive management, manufacturing, …

Logistics, HR, Finance, intelligence …

Each domain fields its own applications and creates its own information to execute its mission

• It is often not possible to federate and integrate applications within domains

In many cases it is necessary to share data within domains and across domains

Enterprises will never meet information sharing needs until it first solves the INFORMATION federation problem

Information Federation Problem

Feb. 17, 2011

Information discovery, reuse, and integration all depend on description

• If we do not know what something is we cannot possibly know how to integrate it with other things or even how it should be used

If we describe everything well enough, we are in a position to have a knowledge-based web

• Integrate and interoperate• Analyze any combination of information

Semantic technologies, RDF & OWL enable information federation

• Both machines and people can understand the descriptions

Federation Requires Description

Feb. 17, 2011

Enterprise Information Web• Any information from any system can be shared with any

other system on the enterprise networks or the World Wide Web

Steps• Describe all of the terms and artifacts in each domain using

the semantic technology standards OWL & RDF• We currently do this description work, but we do not use

machine readable standards – Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Visio• The formal description of a domain is called a domain

ontology• Describe how all of the information managed in each

domain is related to the domain vocabulary use these descriptions to say how domains are related

• Query the Domain vocabularies for any information

The result is an Enterprise Information Web that meets the goals of information sharing and analysis

Information Federation Solution

Feb. 17, 2011

Why Semantics?

5

EIW solves the Information Federation Problem in Real Time

● Real time information integration● Reporting and analysis● Drilldown capabilities ● Leverages the natural federation and integration capabilities enabled by W3C semantic web standards.

Feb. 17, 2011

Enterprise Analytics

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Strategic Initiative

Metrics

Operations

Data

Improve customer’s product selection

Variety of Products, Time to Restock, etc.

Improve soldier’s quality of life

Increase time at home

Manufacturing, Shipping, Forecasting, Sales…

Product Tracking, Sales #, Manufacturing estimates,

Training, Mobilization/Deployment, Recoup, Strength Management

Strength Projections, Available Members, Training, Recruiting,

Retirement

Feb. 17, 2011

Complexities within the DoD

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Operations

Warfighter

Finance

Dept. of Defense

Strategic Initiatives

Human Resources

R&D

Equipment

Logistics

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Dwell Time in the Military

8

TrainingDeployment

Recoup

eMilpo

IPPS

VIPSTAPDB

SMS

ATRRS

DTMS BCS3Eagle Cash

IATS

IATS

IATSWWAS

UTS

SIDPERS

PRMS

IGS

DTS

DTS

DTS

ATIA-LMS

ODSE GFM

GCSS

DTASSPA

Feb. 17, 2011

EIW Ontology Architecture

Human Resources Domain Ontology

Community Ontology

Enterprise Standards

Analytics Ontology

Process Ontology

Discussion Ontology

Relational Mapping Ontology

Source Ontology

Data Source

Relational Mapping Ontology

Source Ontology

Data Source

Policy OntologyMetrics

Ontology

Feb. 17, 2011

Governed Ontology Development

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Governed, collaborative COI

Beer

Ingredient

Brewery

Location

AwardEvent

Turbidity

Award

Bluto: Well, beer has an ingredientChip: Agree. Beer also has turbidityBluto: Agree, beer has a locationChip: I disagree. Beer has a Brewery and brewery has a locationBluto: Agree. Beer has an Award EventChip: And Award Even has an Award

Feb. 17, 2011

Operational Governance

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• List of all ontology development subjects• Includes Status of issueand priority

• List of discussion taskswithin a particularsubject• Includes status, date assigned, andSubject Matter Expert

• List of all discussions within a particular subject

Feb. 17, 2011

Spry Agile Delivery Methodology

Spry has delivered incremental capability every 90 days using an Agile Methodology How?

Flexible Milestones Outline three month plan, adapt to the Governments evolving requirements

Two Week Sprints Priorities reviewed, tasks moved from backlog

Daily stand-ups Team members on task, issues addressed within 24 hours

Jira Web based bug, issue and project tracking Requirements documentation, UI mockups, etc.

Stakeholder Engagement Visibility into ‘real’ progress, not just updates on out of date MS Project Schedule

Significant experience implementing Agile on a large/complex DoD Project- we’re not just using buzzwords from a book

Feb. 17, 2011

Popular Approaches

Data Warehouse

Legacy System

Legacy System

Legacy System

ETL

Data Warehouse Approach SOA Approach

Legacy System

Legacy System

Legacy System

WebServices

WebServices

• Hard coded and/or complexmodels• Poor service discovery,preventing reuse• Limited traceability Process, Consumer,Legacy Data• Difficult to manage and validate ROI

• ETL processes are difficultto manage. • Proprietary in nature

• Hard Coded• Complex Models

• Costly • Require customizations

for “outside the box” functionality

• Customer Lock – In• Data Warehouse “Stacking”

Feb. 17, 2011

The EIW Approach

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• Open Social Gadgets

• Domain Ontology• Mapping Ontology• Source Ontology• Analytic Ontology• Process Ontology

eMILPO ODSE

SPARQL

SQLSQL

Human Resources

Domain Ontology

Community Ontology

CHRIS Reference Ontology

Analytics Ontology

Process Ontology

Discussion Ontology

Relational Mapping Ontology

Source Ontology

Relational Mapping Ontology

Source Ontology

Federator

SPYDER SPYDER

SPARQLSPARQL

• Relational Database• Authoritative Data Sources

Follow Spry…

Twitter – Spry_IncFacebook – Spry, IncWebsite – www.spryinc.com

Tony VachinoEmail: tvachino@spryinc.comLinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyvachino

Feb. 17, 2011

Visibility is only half the picture.

Visibility and understanding is the complete picture

Visibility and Understanding