OSLC-KM

A Knowledge Management specification for OSLC-based resources

Jose María Alvarez-Rodríguez, Juan Llorens, Manuela Alejandres and Jose Fuentes

INCOSE IS 2016

Context

• Multiple domains
  • Different types of artifacts
• Need of intra-operability
  • Intra-domain
• Need of interoperability
  • Inter-domain

Intra-operability

Open Services for Life-cycle Collaboration

OSLC

Interoperability

Purposed solution  by existing OSLC specs.

Source: http://open-services.net/

OSLC resource to

OSLC resource

individual problem solving

Real Situation

Point to point connections-> Combinatorial explosion

A barrier for the full application of the OSLC view

...so What to do?

?

OSLC 

Preliminary Evaluation

• Great effort on interoperability
• Community (industry) effort
• Different types of artifacts (resource shapes)
• OASIS standards (Core, Change Management, etc.)
• ...

Challenges (among others)

• Increase of interoperability complexity when new domains are defined
• Provision of services to all the resource shapes

which leads to the need of a

more universal approach

KCSE

Knowledge-centric Systems Engineering

KCSE: notion of an OSLC bus

Representation

Services

COMMON

How many different types of artifacts are generated during the development life-cycle?

tools, formats, protocols, query languages,  etc.

Representation

Needs and Challenges

• A common representation model
• Interoperability
• ...

 Services

• Language Uniformity 
• Quality checking
• Visualization
• Traceability
• Human machine interface
• ...

Needs and Challenges

• A common representation model
• Interoperability
• Knowledge Management processes
• Natural language to express queries
• ...

OSLC-KM

New domain

New resource shape

RDF

Resource Description Framework

• Common & shared Data model
• Triples
  • (subject, object, predicate)
• Binary relationships
• Underlying Directed Graph
• W3C Recommendation (2004)
• Query languages

RDFS

RDF Schema

• Data modeling for RDF data
• Classes
• Properties (domain & ranges)
• RDF serialization
• W3C Recommendation (2004)

OWL

Ontology Web Language

• Vocabulary for defining formal ontologies
• Logic-oriented
• RDF serialization
• Flavours (2.0): EL, QL, RL
• W3C Recommendation (2012, v2.0)

RIF

Rule Interchange Format

• Exchange of business rules
• Rule-oriented
• Flavours: Core, PRD, BLD, etc.
• XML serialization
• W3C Recommendation (2013, v2.0)

RSHP

Relationship "arship"

• Property Graph
• Any kind of relationship
  • Arity and Cardinality
• Industry-oriented
• Native tool support
• Queries based on natural language
• First publication 2004

Others

• SBVR
  • Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules
• ODM
  • Ontology Definition Metamodel
• RAS
  • Reusable Asset Specification 

Preliminary Evaluation

http://trc-research.github.io/spec/km/

• RDF good option for exchange data on the web
  • Restrictions: arity and cardinality of relationships, lack of native tools, logics, etc.
• RDFS and OWL
  • Oriented to define formal ontologies
• RSHP
  • High level of Expressivity
  • Native tool support
  • ...

Our approach

OSLC 

(Data Exchange)

RSHP*

(Internal representation: metadata+contents 

and services)

The Specification

Shape for KM resources

Metadata+Contents

Resource Shape

Based on the W3C SKOS Recommendation

Simple Knowledge Organization System

OSLC Core

Provenance*
Access (W3C HTTP Access)

Metadata (Dublin Core, traces, etc.)
Contents (resource shape)

Visualization (SVG)

Summary of Properties

Properties

http://trc-research.github.io/spec/km/#km-resource-definitions

All in one...

http://trc-research.github.io/spec/km/

One implementation

...on top of...

Knowledge Manager by

The REUSE Company

Vocabulary

& Conceptual Model

• Normalization
• Standardization
• Suggestions
• X Breakdown Structures
• ...

Patterns

• Restrictions
• Examples
• Suggestions

On-going work...

Process any kind of OSLC Resource or RDF data...

E.g. Modelica

Summary

• Use of the W3C Recommendations
• Concepts and relationships are the entities to be exchanged 
• Services for: search, trace, naming, visualize, etc.

Metadata+Contents

Artifact

OSLC KM

Knowledge Centric Systems Engineering to govern the development lifecyle

SRL

Inputs

Outputs

...

Common services

Representation

OSLC KM

Not a dream! 

SRL

Inputs

Outputs

...

Common services

Representation

Advantages

• Standard exchange of data: OSLC
• Enhance expressiveness (RSHP)
• Reuse of existing standards and vocabularies
• Native Tool support (Knowledge Manager)
• Cross-cutting services (semantic-based)
• Elastic approach
• ...

Drawbacks

• Scope of knowledge management (needs)
• Potential overlapping with other tools and specs 
• Need of spread the approach

Conclusions

• Knowledge Management: a key process

  • ​REUSE!

• Need of:
  • Reuse of standards and service-oriented functionalities (OSLC)
  • Take the most for data exchange (OSLC) and representation (RSHP)
  • Bring technology to a human-oriented environment (NLP)
• Technical issues
  • Completeness of the specification?
  • Implementation

Future work

• Merge and extend the spec with other knowledge standards

  • E.g. STEP, Industrial Internet activities

• Refine of the resource shape 

• Full implementation and support to all services

• Integration patterns governed by knowledge

• ...

Industrial Linked Data

OSLC applications

• Semantic Impact Analysis
• Risk Analysis
• Continuous Engineering
• ...

Speakers 

•  Dr. Jose María Alvarez-Rodríguez
  • Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain
  • Member of INCOSE and the OSLC RM working group
  • E-mail: josemaria.alvarez@uc3m.es
  • WWW: 
    • http://purl.org/krgroup/web
    • Personal site

• Prof. Dr. Juan Llorens
  • Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain
  • Member of INCOSE 
  • CTO of The Reuse Company Inc.
  • E-mail: llorens@kr.inf.uc3m.es
  • WWW: 
    • http://purl.org/krgroup/web

    • Personal site