RE: [members] Proposed Charter for OASIS Semantic Mapping of XML (MOX) TC

From
Thomas, Darrel <>
Date
2008-09-08T16:25:16+00:00
ID
Thread
RE: [members] Proposed Charter for OASIS Semantic Mapping of XML (MOX) TC
Title: RE: [members] Proposed Charter for OASIS Semantic Mapping of XML (MOX) TC

To Whom It May Concern,

OASIS had a TC/Member section called DCML based on the mapping of the Semantic Web + RDF to XML for the purposes of IT Orchestration.  i would like to understand the difference between this similar mapping strategy - is it just the layer of purpose (i.e., at the services layer vs. the IT layer)?  Is it more generic, and isnt it somewhat rework?

pls clarify,

jDT

-----Original Message-----

From: Mary McRae on behalf of Mary McRae

Sent: Mon 9/8/2008 11:04 AM

To: ; 

Cc: 

Subject: [members] Proposed Charter for OASIS Semantic Mapping of XML (MOX) TC

To OASIS Members:

  A draft TC charter has been submitted to establish the OASIS Semantic

Mapping of XML (MOX) Technical Committee (below). In accordance with the

OASIS TC Process Policy section 2.2:

(http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process-2008-06-19.php#formation) the

proposed charter is hereby submitted for comment. The comment period shall

remain open until 11:45 pm ET on 22 September 2008.

  OASIS maintains a mailing list for the purpose of submitting comments on

proposed charters. Any OASIS member may post to this list by sending email

to:

mailto:. All messages will be

publicly archived at:

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oasis-charter-discuss/. Members who

wish to receive emails must join the group by selecting "join group" on the

group home page:

http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/oasis-charter-discuss/.

Employees of organizational members do not require primary representative

approval to subscribe to the oasis-charter-discuss e-mail.

  A telephone conference will be held among the Convener, the OASIS TC

Administrator, and those proposers who wish to attend within four days of

the close of the comment period. The announcement and call-in information

will be noted on the OASIS Charter Discuss Group Calendar.

  We encourage member comment and ask that you note the name of the proposed

TC ([MOX]) in the subject line of your email message.

Regards,

Mary

---------------------------------------------------

Mary P McRae

Director, Technical Committee Administration

OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society

email:  

web: www.oasis-open.org

phone: 1.603.232.9090

===========

PROPOSED CHARTER FOR REVIEW AND COMMENT

OASIS Semantic Mapping of XML (MOX) Technical Committee

1) The Charter of the TC, which includes only the following items:

(1)(a) The name of the TC

OASIS Semantic mapping of XML (MOX) Technical Committee

(1)(b) A statement of purpose, including a definition of the problem to be

solved.

The ability to discover and compose services based on semantic analysis or

mapping is needed in many industries such as Telecom and e-Health. In the

Telecom industry, having the ability to discover and compose services based

on those services' semantics is needed to enable Telecom providers to

guarantee Service Level Agreements (SLAs). As such, there is a need to

derive ontologies from the service WSDL file to describe the service

functionality/behavior within domains.

The composition of web services is achieved by creating a third web service

(hereafter referred to as the integrating web service) and its Web Service

Description Language (WSDL) file. This web service invokes the source legacy

Web service to retrieve data, mediates to resolve any mismatches the data

has with the destination web service, typically through invocation of common

services, and then passes the converted data to this destination Web

service. The mediation step can take various forms including an XSL

transformation.  Typically the XSL is generated at design time by either a

programmer or by a data expert using an editor that permits the matching of

entities in different schemas by drawing lines between schemas entities.

Currently in data management tools, the matched entities correspond to

logical constraints on the schemas (e.g. XQuery, XSL, SQL), making them

difficult to exchange across systems.

 

Semantic mediation and Semantic Web Service approaches require the use of

aligned ontologies and XSL to achieve mediation in semantic composition of

Web services. Thus, enabling the semantic composition of Web services

requires the generation of XSL, mediating schema, aligned ontologies, and

possibly other artifacts. Currently, each of the artifacts mentioned above

requires a different process for its creation. The issues with the current

approach of service composition become more obvious when you consider that

the integrated service will be integrated with other web services. For

example, how do you reuse the artifacts that were created for the

integrating web service when it needs to be composed with another web

service?

In this work, the TC will investigate the use of mapping relations which

result in the generation of the artifacts needed for service composition and

reuse. That is, by capturing the mappings of XML Schemas entities in XML or

HTML, a user agent can generate the mediating schema, the XSL, and the

aligned ontologies needed to semantically compose web services. This way, a

single process can be used to generate the mappings between schemas, which

result in the generation of XSL, mediating schemas, and aligned ontologies.

Furthermore, the mapped entities can be exchanged between different

platforms by simply copying them.  Consequently, mapping relations enable

reuse in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

 

As such, the objective of the working group is to specify a standard for

mappings between XML schemas using mapping relations. We refer to a file

that is compliant with the standard specification as a MOX file. The TC

accepts as its starting point the mapping relations as described in the Web

of Mashup and Metadata Scripting Language (WMSL) [6,7]. Other contributions

will be accepted for consideration without any prejudice or restrictions and

evaluated based on technical merit insofar as they conform to this charter.

OASIS members with extensive experience and knowledge in these areas are

particularly invited to participate. WMSL provides an effective means to

enable the Mashup of web services while specifying data semantics. WMSL is

simply a web page or an XML page that specifies the import of schemas and

mappings between schemas using mapping relations. Examples of mapping

relations include: equivalentClass, sameAs, subClassOf, hasMatch,

hasContext, and hasRelation. Once a MOX is captured, then a user agent can

accomplish the automated transformation between the mapped XML schemas, the

automated generation of a mediation schema model, or the mediation ontology

that mediates between the mapped XML schemas. 

(1)(c) The scope of the work of the TC.

First, the TC will focus on analyzing a subset of the tools currently in use

in SOA for the purpose of determining the artifacts that the current tools

generate from schema mappings. It is expected that these tools generate one

of the following: XSL, OWL, XQEURY or SQL. Next, the technical committee

will provide a classification of the types of data mediation provided by

current tool vendors. Then, the technical committee will specify the mapping

relations that guarantee automated translations between XML schemas, and the

generation of the mediation schema. The TC accepts as its starting point the

mapping relations as described in the Web of Mashup and Metadata Scripting

Language. Other contributions will be accepted for consideration without any

prejudice or restrictions and evaluated based on technical merit insofar as

they conform to this charter. OASIS members with extensive experience and

knowledge in these areas are particularly invited to participate.

Specifically, the TC will do the following:

1.  Conduct a survey of existing tools and methodologies that are used to

achieve semantic mappings between schemas.

2.  Define formal operations of mapping relations on XML schemas to specify

the generation of the mediating schema from the mapping relations

3.  Define formal operations of mapping relations on XML instances to

specify the automated translation of xml instances

4.  Define formal operations of mapping relations on RDF ontologies to

specify the definition of the mapping relations in OWL

5.  Specify mapping rules between XML schema primitives [3] and OWL/RDF

[4,5] primitives for the purpose of generating aligned ontology from mapped

schemas

6.  Specify a uniform approach for identifying and accessing entities in

schemas, including xml schema, RDF and OWL schemas [1,2]

7.  Consider the suitability of the developed techniques to address Telecom

use cases from the Telecom Member section TC and also the applicability of

the developed technologies to other uses cases from the health industry.

Out of Scope

The mediation functionality which cannot be achieved from mapping relations

is considered out of scope. For example, query rewriting using mapping

relations is out of scope. Furthermore, although the proposed standard may

work for not only XML Schemas and XML instances, but also for ontologies,

the TC may choose to address the mappings of XML Schemas and XML instances

first, and then ensures that the methodology is also applicable on RDF\OWL

files second.

(1)(d) A list of deliverables, with projected completion dates.

1.  A survey of existing tools and the artifacts they produced in achieving

data mediation. The document will also contain a classification of the types

of data mediation; March 2009.

2.  A specification containing the definitions of the mapping relations

using XML Schema resulting in the generation of the mediating schema.

3.  A specification of the operation of the mapping relations on XML

instances.

4.  A specification of the mapping relations in OWL/RDF, and  a

specification of the mapping rules between XML schema primitives [3] and

OWL/RDF [4,5] primitives

5.  A specification for identifying and accessing entities in XML Schemas

and XML instances

6.  A MOX specification containing the encoding of the mapping relations in

HTML and XML.

A single MOX file permits a user agent the generation of XSL, the generation

of the mediating schema, and the generation of the aligned ontologies. That

is, given a MOX file, a user agent can generate the XSL by following the

rules specified in bullet number three above, or generate the mediating

schema by following the rules specified in bullet number two above, or

generate the aligned ontologies by following the rules specified in bullet

number four above. Thus all of the identified artifacts associated with

service composition are generated from a single MOX file.

In developing specifications 2,3,4,5 and 6 the TC will develop a Test Plan,

Test Cases and Scenarios, for each normative specification. The Test plan

shall include means for ensuring that compliant implementations are

interoperable.

The TC will closely coordinate with other TCs, particularly with those in

the Telecom Member Section to ensure that related specifications are

consistent and can be used with each other.

(1)(e) Specification of the IPR Mode under which the TC will operate. 

       The TC shall operate under: RAND

(1)(f) The anticipated audience or users of the work.

       It is anticipated that SOA vendors will implement the specifications

produced by the TC.

(1)(g) The language in which the TC shall conduct business. 

       This TC will use English as the language for conducting its

operations.

(2) Non-normative information regarding the startup of the TC:

(2)(a) Identification of similar or applicable work that is being done in

other OASIS TCs or by other organizations, so as to address these issues:

why there is a need for another effort in this area and how this proposed TC

will be different, and what level of liaison will be pursued with these

other organizations.

The TC will be performing new work items that are currently not covered by

any other OASIS TCs.

The TC co-chairs will coordinate closely with other bodies in order to

inform them about the progress of the work and also in order to count on

their expertise in the development of the work.  The chairs will also

continually monitor any new work that models XML schema as graphs, and may

leverage existing standards, such as XPATH [1] or Schema Component

Designator [2], where appropriate. The TC will also be making extensive use

of XML Schemas and RDF/OWL.

As of this date, there is no other working group whose work overlaps with

the work of this TC.

(2)(b) The date, time, and location of the first meeting, whether it will be

held in person or by phone, and who will sponsor this first meeting. The

first meeting of a TC shall occur no less than 30 days after the

announcement of its formation in the case of a telephone or other electronic

meeting, and no less than 45 days after the announcement of its formation in

the case of a face-to-face meeting.

The first meeting of this TC will be a face-to-face meeting to be held on

Tuesday December 2nd, at Mitre Corporation, 202 Burlington Rd, Bedford, MA,

01730, USA.

(2)(c) The projected on-going meeting schedule for the year following the

formation of the TC, or until the projected date of the final deliverable,

whichever comes first, and who will be expected to sponsor these meetings.

The TC will conduct its business via weekly teleconference calls. The time

of the call will be determined during the first meeting of the TC. The TC

will conduct F2F meetings on as needed basis. Teleconference facilities will

be sponsored by Nortel.

(2)(d) The names, electronic mail addresses and membership affiliations of

at least Minimum Membership who support this proposal and are committed to

the Charter and projected meeting schedule.

- Marwan Sabbouh,  , MITRE

- Abbie Barbir, , Nortel

- Paul Knight, , Nortel

- Hanane Becha, , Nortel

- Sriram Gopalan, , Booz Allen Hamilton

- Kajal Claypool, , MIT Lincoln Lab

- Rex Brooks, , Individual

- Brad Medairy, , Booz Allen Hamilton

- Sandeep Maripuri , , Booz Allen Hamilton

- Peter Cotroneo, , MIT Lincoln Lab

- Aaron Braeckel, , The University Corporation for

Atmospheric Research

- Sandeep Purao, , PSU       

(2)(e) The name of the Convener who must be an Eligible Person.

       Paul Knight (Nortel)

(2)(f) The name of the Member Section with which the TC intends to affiliate

with

       None.

(2)(g) Optionally, a list of contributions of existing technical work that

the proposers anticipate will be made to this TC.        

       TBD

(2)(h) Optionally, a draft of frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document

regarding the planned scope of the TC, for posting on the TC's website.

       None

(2)(i) Optionally, a proposed working title and acronym for the

specification(s) to be developed by the TC.

       None

References

[1] XML Path Language (XPath) http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath

[2] XML Schema: Component Designators http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-ref/

[3] Mapping XML Schema Primitives to RDF/OWL Primitives; MTR080089 MITRE

TECHNICAL REPORT

[4] Resource Description Framework http://www.w3.org/RDF/

[5] OWL Web Ontology Language http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/

[6] The Web of Mashup and Metadata Scripting Language

http://semanticweb.mitre.org/wmsl/

[7] Using Mapping Relations to Semi Automatically Compose Web Services IEEE

SERVICES 2008

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