1. The Open Group UDEF Forum
4 February, 2019
Representation of the Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF) in RDF and OWL
Ron Schuldt, Chair
The Open Group UDEF Forum
August 15, 2006

2. The Open Group UDEF Participants
The Open Group Staff
Lockheed Martin
IBM
Capgemini
Adobe
Safyre Solutions
Johnson & Johnson
Raytheon
CACI
Federal SICoP
BEA Systems
SanDisk
Boeing
OMG
OAGi
NDIA-AFEI
GEIA
CompTIA
GEFEG
W3C Semantic Web
RosettaNet
POSC
SWIFT
Dublin Core Metadata
Global Exchange Services
Chevron Texaco
Proctor & Gamble
Northrop Grumman
SAIC
ManTech
MITRE
NATO C3 Agency
Metamatrix
Australian Government
Cemantica
Canadian Government
Penn State University
Denmark Government
Wind River Systems
Conmergence
Metaplexity Associates
MLR Associates
Sparton
Tyco Electronics
Curtin Business School
Grant MacEwan College
DHL
Agilense, Inc.
Architecting the Enterprise
NCCS
Infravio
NEC Co.
Articulate Software
Celestial Consulting
Sterling Commerce
US NIH
US DLA
And others
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

3. The UDEF
The UDEF is a standard way of indexing enterprise data that can produce big cost savings.
A large enterprise has many different information stores and applications, which organize and categorize data in different ways. The UDEF enables it to categorize data in a standard and consistent way, greatly reducing the cost of programming
A small enterprise needs to exchange data with large customers, and can realize cost savings if the applications involved have been UDEF-enabled.
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

4. UDEF and ISO 11179
UDEF is based on ISO 11179, the international standard for metadata registries
UDEF indexes data element concepts. A data element concept:
Corresponds roughly to a data field
Is characterized by object class and property
Is independent of representation.
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

5. Registration Authority
4 February, 2019
ISO Metadata Registry
Object Class Id
Property Id
Name
Registration Authority
Steward
01234
90531
Trainee Name HR
J. Smith
90532
College Fees
Finance
M. Johnson
90533
Supervisor name
01235
70652
Placement program
R. Jones
In ISO 11179, a data element concept has a unique identifier in a registry, and may have multiple names.
The identifier is too unique: the same concept has different identifiers in different registries
They can be mapped pair-wise across registries, but the number of mappings grows enormously as the number of registries increases, making semantic interoperability practically impossible.
The UDEF gives each data element concept a name that is unique across all registries, reducing the mappings needed from n2 to 2n
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

6. UDEF Names aa.3_4.1 UDEF Object Class 3 Enterprise aa.3 Academic
4 February, 2019
UDEF Names
aa.3_4.1
UDEF
Object Class 3
Enterprise
aa.3
Academic
Property 1
Amount
4.1
Fee
Syntactically, the UDEF name for a data element concept is a pair of numeric strings, one representing the object class, the other representing the property.
Semantically, the names are derived from taxonomies of objects and properties.
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

7. The UDEF Taxonomies
The taxonomies are developed by analysing objects and properties from the point of view of the enterprise.
They are hierarchical
Nodes at each level are derived from their parents by subtype and also by role
Nodes can not have identical meanings, but their meanings can overlap
The only criterion for adding a new node is that an enterprise somewhere has a data element concept that cannot be represented using the existing hierarchies
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

8. Multi-lingual UDEF
The foregoing principle also applies where enterprises use different human languages to describe their data element concepts
The initial work on the UDEF was done in English, but the UDEF is human-language-agnostic
If a data element concept described in a particular language can be represented using existing nodes labelled in other languages, then a new node is not added, but labels in the new language are added to the existing nodes
But if it cannot be so described then a new node is added, labelled just in the new language
This may result in nodes that have no English labels
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

9. UDEF and RDF <rdfs:Class rdf:ID="UDEFProperty"/>
4 February, 2019
UDEF and RDF
<rdfs:Class rdf:ID="UDEFProperty"/>
<rdfs:Class rdf:ID="UDEFObjectClass"/>
On the web at
The RDF version of the UDEF consists of the UDEF object and property taxonomies represented in RDF.
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

10. UDEF and RDF (2) <rdfs:Class rdf:ID="UDEF-3">
4 February, 2019
UDEF and RDF (2)
<rdfs:Class rdf:ID="UDEF-3">
<rdfs:label rdf:datatype="
XMLSchema#string">Enterprise</rdfs:label>
<rdfs:comment rdf:datatype=" >Any data or information about any definable boundary collection of human and asset resources used to perform a collection of processes to create one or more products which are intended for use or consumption by outside entities</rdfs:comment>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#UDEFObjectClass"/>
</rdfs:Class>
Each node of the UDEF object and property hierarchies is an RDFS class
The RDFS class name is based on the UDEF numeric code name (a few characters are added to cater for the idiosyncrasies of XML representation)
The human-language node labels are represented as RDFS labels
A class can in principle have multiple labels in multiple human languages (but this has not yet been implemented – all labels in the current RDF representation are in English)
The top-level nodes in each hierarchy have brief descriptions in addition to their labels. These are represented as RDFS comments.
The taxonomy hierarchy is modeled by the RDFS subclass property
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

11. UDEF and RDF (3) <rdfs:Class rdf:ID="UDEF-aa.3">
4 February, 2019
UDEF and RDF (3)
<rdfs:Class rdf:ID="UDEF-aa.3">
<rdfs:label rdf:datatype="
XMLSchema#string">Academic.Enterprise</rdfs:label>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#UDEF-3"/>
</rdfs:Class>
Nodes below the top level do not have descriptions, they just have labels.
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

12. UDEF and RDF (4) <rdfs:Class rdf:ID="_1">
4 February, 2019
UDEF and RDF (4)
<rdfs:Class rdf:ID="_1">
<rdfs:label rdf:datatype="
XMLSchema#string">Amount</rdfs:label>
<rdfs:comment rdf:datatype="
XMLSchema#string" >A number of monetary units specified in a currency</rdfs:comment>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#UDEFProperty"/>
</rdfs:Class>
<rdfs:Class rdf:ID="_4.1">
XMLSchema#string">Fee.Amount</rdfs:label>
<rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#_1"/>
Properties are represented in a similar way to object classes, with a slight difference in the convention for the identifiers.
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

13. Benefits of The RDF Representation
Products can use it to import the UDEF
Enterprises that use the semantic web to represent their metadata can use the UDEF
OWL ontologies can be built showing relationships between enterprise ontologies and the UDEF, and allowing reasoning
Enterprises that use ISO for metadata management can interoperate semantically with enterprises that use the semantic web, by means of the UDEF
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

14. UDEF in OWL – PO Example
This example was submitted to The Open Group UDEF Forum by Mohamed Keshk
Purchase Order
Item
Number
d.t.2_8
Number
9_8
Date
Priority
Line Item
Total
d.t.2_6
Quantity
Unit of Measure
Unit Price
Total Price
9_13.11
d.t.2_31.4
9_1.18.4
d.t.2_1.17.8
9_1.2.1
d.t.2_1.15.1 9_
<!-- ============= Classes ============= -->
<owl:Class rdf:ID="PurchaseOrder"/>
<owl:Class rdf:ID="Item"/>
<owl:Class rdf:ID="UDEF_DataElement"/>
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

15. UDEF in OWL (2)
<!-- ============= Object Properties ============= -->
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="items">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#PurchaseOrder"/>
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="#Item"/>
</owl:ObjectProperty>
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="hasUDEF_DataElement">
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="#UDEF_DataElement"/>
<!-- ============= Data Properties ============= -->
<owl:DatatypeProperty rdf:ID="purchaseOrderID">
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="#PurchaseOrder"/>
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="&xsd;string"/>
</owl:DatatypeProperty>
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

16. UDEF in OWL (3)
<!-- ============= UDEF DataElement Individuals ============= -->
<UDEF_DataElement rdf:ID="PO1_d.t.2_8">
<name rdf:datatype="&xsd;string">purchaseOrderID</name>
<value rdf:datatype="&xsd;string">PO-123</value>
</UDEF_DataElement>
<!-- ============= Application Individuals ============= -->
<PurchaseOrder rdf:ID="PO1">
<hasUDEF_DataElement rdf:resource="#PO1_d.t.2_8"/>
<hasUDEF_DataElement rdf:resource="#PO1_d.t.2_6"/>
<hasUDEF_DataElement rdf:resource="#PO1_d.t.2_31.4"/>
<hasUDEF_DataElement rdf:resource="#PO1_d.t.2_1.15.1"/>
<items rdf:resource="#Item1"/>
<items rdf:resource="#Item2"/>
<items rdf:resource="#Item3"/>
</PurchaseOrder>
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

17. UDEF in OWL (4)
<!-- ============= Application Individuals - continued ============= -->
<Item rdf:ID="Item1">
<hasUDEF_DataElement rdf:resource="#Item1_i.9_8"/>
<hasUDEF_DataElement rdf:resource="#Item1_i.9_13.11"/>
<hasUDEF_DataElement rdf:resource="#Item1_i.9_1.18.4"/>
<hasUDEF_DataElement rdf:resource="#Item1_i.9_1.2.1"/>
<hasUDEF_DataElement rdf:resource="#Item1_i.9_ "/>
</Item>
<Item rdf:ID="Item2">
<hasUDEF_DataElement rdf:resource="#Item2_i.9_8"/>
<hasUDEF_DataElement rdf:resource="#Item2_i.9_13.11"/>
<hasUDEF_DataElement rdf:resource="#Item2_i.9_1.18.4"/>
<hasUDEF_DataElement rdf:resource="#Item2_i.9_1.2.1"/>
<hasUDEF_DataElement rdf:resource="#Item2_i.9_ "/>
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006

18. Benefits of The OWL Representation
Potentially build applications based on OWL and UDEF
Use the UDEF ID embedded within OWL to align the semantics across disparate applications
For Possible Follow-up Questions - Contact
Dr. Chris Harding –
Ron Schuldt –
4 February, 2019
© The Open Group 2006