Semantic Mediation Bus: An Ontology-based Runtime Infrastructure for Service Interoperability

Semantic Mediation Bus: An Ontology-based Runtime Infrastructure for Service Interoperability

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  Extending SOA Infrastructurefor Semantic Interoperability Wen Zhu wzhu@alionscience.com ITEA System of Systems Conference www.alionscience.com/semantic 26 Jan 2012
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  SLIDE 2 Agenda • Background •Semantic Mediation Bus™ • Semantic Mediation and System of Systems
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  SLIDE 3 ServiceOriented Architecture (SOA) • Key Benefits: • Provides standards based mechanism to access Services at the transport and protocol level • Promotes re-use of existing services • Enables fast adaptation to business needs • Aligns information resources to business goals
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  SLIDE 4 SOALimitations • Current Web Service standards provide the syntactic description of the service interface, but do not describe the meaning or the semantics of the data or behavior. Hence the consumer of the service; whether another service or a human, needs to have intimate knowledge and awareness about the data and its elements • Current Enterprise Service Buses (ESBs) don’t have an out of the box ability to perform Semantic Mediation, that is the transformation and co-relation of data elements and services based on a pre-defined vocabulary • Manual intervention and deep domain knowledge is required to develop custom mappings to correctly use data exposed by these related but different Web Services Source: Elements of a deployed, modern net-centric system http://www.mil-embedded.com/articles/id/?4597
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  Case In Point:Information Sharing in NextGen Integrated Flight and Airport Airline Weather UAS Safety Other Surveillance Flow Operations Operations Community Community Community Communities Community Community Community Community Services Flight conform Weather Track publish Standards Data SAR Time AXIM KML WXXM Classification Live GML FIXM Other Services WCS ebXML Geospatial Recorded WFS UDDI Coverage WMS Temporal Other Standards Coverage Simulated State/Local Commercial International Government Entities Partners
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  Semantic Web Technologies • Semantic Web (aka Linked Data or Web 3.0) is a set of W3C standards and technologies designed to allow machines to understand the meaning of the information on the WWW • Standards-based • Open-source tools • Agent-based distributed computing paradigm • Web Oriented Architecture • Agile Development, improved interoperability • Semantic Web in the Enterprise: A tool for knowledge discovery and management • Common Vocabulary • Open Linked Data • Intelligent Searches • Semantic Web in the Industry • US government and leading social network companies have been implementing semantic-driven solutions Source: Tim Berners-Lee: “Semantic Web and Linked Data”
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  SLIDE 7 Semantics +SOA SOA Foundation for Service Interoperability Semantic Mediation Bus™ Runtime infrastructure enables semantic interoperability through common Semantics ontologies, even if the services are Common Understanding of Business Concepts implemented using different data models and message standards. Problems • How I can improve Interoperability between different services and reduce system integration costs? • I have already invested a lot in my SOA infrastructure, how do I leverage it for for Semantic Interoperability? • How can I effectively test the same SOA message in multiple formats between the systems?
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  SLIDE 8 SOA Silos Airline Code Lookup Table Data: UA HR Flight Field Name: FAA Flight Army Track Track Web Commercial Flight Reference Display Service Data: 122 User Human Communication 1 3 1 AF SME AF Flight Field Name: Flight of Custom Track Interest Mapping Web Data: United 122 2 Service 3 Custom System Integration Development SME 2 Other HR Field Name: Developer Custom FlightID Data HR Army Mapping Provider Marine Data: UA122 Excess time is spent interpreting data from different sources despite the usage of advanced IT techniques like Web Services
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  SLIDE 9 Alion SemanticMediation Bus™ • An ontology-based web services mediation component (Semantic Mediator) that enables services with different message formats to interoperate • Embedding the Semantic Mediator in an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) enables runtime semantic mediation within traditional SOA infrastructure, creating a Semantic Mediation BusTM Common Ontology Semantic Mediation BusTM Enterprise Service Bus Semantic Mediator Registry/Repository Message Schema Web Service Proxy Semantic Lookup and Semantic Mapping Interoperability Assessment Annotation Metadata Management Protocol Message Message Routing Security Service Adaption Transformation Discovery Traditional SOA Semantic Mediation infrastructure Infrastructure
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  SLIDE 10 Semantic MediationBus™: Key Characteristics • Cooperation through federation, instead of standardization • The ontology driven approach avoids imposing a standard that has to be agreed by everybody, thus allowing the agencies to select the formats best suited for their business needs, while still being able to use services offered by other agencies. • Increased ability to adapt to the ever changing business needs in a timely and cost effective manner • The semantic mediation approach encourages transformation logic to be declaratively defined in the ontology, instead of buried in the code, often in multiple places. • No need for rigid conformance • Through loose coupling, the SMB allows transformation between message formats which might not be a complete match. • Building on SOA infrastructure, instead of replacing it • By extending ESB infrastructure, organization can leverage their SOA investment and the existing expertise of their personnel.
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  Testing System ofSystems with SMB SLIDE 11 Validate business requirements and determine service Airline Code Lookup Table compatibilities Data: UA Semantic FAA HR Field Name: Mediation Web Army Commercial Flight Test Script Bus™ Service Data: 211 Reference Semantic Lookup Business Air Force Field Name: Flight of Requirements Web Interest Service Data: UA211 Message Transformation Technical Requirements Web Service 3rd Party HR Field Name: Endpoint Web HR Army FlightID Service Marine Data: United 211 Delegate to infrastructure to collect measurements for non- functional requirements
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  SLIDE 12 SMB asPart of a Semantic Enterprise Ontologies reflecting Shared understanding of business concepts is developed by engaging SMB is part of the the established technology capability Communities of Interest that extends (COI) and Subject traditional SOA to Matter Experts (SME). enable semantic service discoverability and interoperability. Secure and effective IT infrastructure is the foundation for Net- Centric information sharing.
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  SLIDE 13 Summary • PutOntologies to Work • Enhance service understandability at design time • Facilitate service interoperability at runtime • Leverage Existing SOA Investment • Increase service discoverability and interoperability through semantic annotation • Build on existing services • Use in-house expertise • Ready to deploy now • Streamline Service Integration and Testing • Shorten lifecycle by eliminating the need for custom message mapping • Reduce maintenance cost by leveraging existing infrastructure
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  SLIDE 14 www.alionscience.com