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Towards Executable Enterprise Models: Building Semantic Enterprise Architecture Solutions with TopBraid Suite™

Abstract: This whitepaper presents an overview of the need for and value of dynamic and executable EA models for enterprises.  It makes made a case that semantic web technologies and TopBraid Suite are a promising way to accomplish this.  The benefits of using Semantic Web technologies for EA solutions include:

• Every entity is ‘first class’ – no re-engineering data to promote entities as requirements change
• Flexible schemas – add new kinds of data (metadata) as systems change
• It is easy to link external information – refer to reference models, standards, any external information as a ‘web’ connection (URI)

TopBraid Suite encompasses the full spectrum of Semantic Web tools and technologies necessary to build and deploy Semantic Enterprise Architecture solutions.  Benefits include:

• Standards’ based capture and management of enterprise information models and metadata based natively on RDF, RDFS and OWL
• Information aggregation across diverse enterprise data sources using TopBraid Composer’s multiple import modes – information from other EA systems, spreadsheets, databases, etc.
• Support for workflows and alerts
• Fully customizable and extendable taxonomies for organizing IT standards across the enterprise
• Support and compliance with the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) including Federal Transition Framework (FTF) and the Data Reference Model (DRM)

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Semantic Web Solutions at Work in the Enterprise

Abstract: The amount of digitized information is growing at unprecedented rate. By 2007 the size of individual databases at many organizations reached up to hundreds and in some cases thousands of terabytes. For example, in 2004 AT&T had 11 exabytes (10⁷ TB) of wireline, wireless and Internet data. This is an equivalent amount of data to that held by 1 million Libraries of Congress. Wal-Mart had 500 terabytes of transactional data and was adding 10⁷ transactions per day. On average, the size of transactional databases doubles every five years with core databases doubling every two years. Data reporting and analysis warehouses (OLAP stores) triple in size every three years. On the web, by 2007 there were 29.7 billion pages, roughly five pages for every man, woman, and child on the planet. In 2006 alone, the size of the information created or replicated worldwide was 161 exabytes (108 TB).

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FEA Ontology Modeling White Paper

Abstract: This white paper describes the design of the Federal Enterprise Architecture Reference Ontology Models (FEA RMO). Five models have been encoded in OWL (W3C standard Web Ontology Language). The paper is organized in the following sections:

• FEA RMO Ontology Models – this section describes FEA RMO architecture and identifies business value and potential of the models
• Assessment of the Semantics of the FEA – this section describes some inconsistencies, conflicts and omissions discovered in the process of formalizing FEA framework as ontology models
• Use Cases of the FEA RMO – this section describes representative use cases
• FEA RMO Development Approach – this section describes the design patterns used by FEA RMO; it is intended for people interested in using and extending the models
• Tooling Issues – this section describes technical issues with the state of the art ontology tools discovered during FEA RMO development
• Recommendations and Future Plans – this section describes our “wish list”, defining where and how we would like to see the work progressing; it also identifies FEA RMO deployment and governance options.

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Dictionary of Search Terminology

Abstract: The problem of Information Retrieval continues to attract increasing attention as the oceans of unstructured data organizations have already captured, and are continuing to capture, keep on growing. At the same time accurate and speedy access to the information is becoming ever more difficult.

In selecting the right search tool many factors need to be taken in to account, including:

• Nature of typical search queries (studies have found important differences between e-commerce product search, customer service / tech support search and other types of searches)
• Form, format and location of the information and knowledge sources
• Organization’s information publishing processes
• Availability of the metadata, custom dictionaries and taxonomies
• Readiness of an organization to engage in a continuous process necessary to achieve search precision

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Towards Executable Enterprise Models-Building Semantic Enterprise Architecture Solutions with TopBraid Suite™

Semantic Web Solutions at Work
in the Enterprise

FEA Ontology Modeling White Paper

Dictionary of Search Terminology