=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3214/WS2Paper3
|storemode=property
|title=Advancing Data Exchange Standards for Interoperable Enterprise Networks
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3214/WS2Paper3.pdf
|volume=Vol-3214
|authors=Nenad Ivezic,Elena Jelisic,Marija Jankovic,Boonserm Kulvatunyou,Dionysios Kehagias,Zoran Marjanovic
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/iesa/IvezicJJKKM22
}}
==Advancing Data Exchange Standards for Interoperable Enterprise Networks==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3214/WS2Paper3.pdf
Advancing Data Exchange Standards for Interoperable
Enterprise Networks
Nenad Ivezic1, Elena Jelisic1,2, Marija Jankovic3, Boonserm Kulvatunyou1, Dionysios
Kehagias3, and Zoran Marjanovic2
1
National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA
2
Faculty of organizational sciences, Jove Ilica 154, Belgrade, 11000, Serbia
3
Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, 6th km Charilaou-Thermi Rd, Thessaloniki, 57001, Greece
Abstract
Recently, our interoperability research strategy delivered significant results by (1) adopting
the ISO-approved Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS) meta-model as a basis
for a new data exchange modeling framework and (2) developing Score, which is an
innovative open-source, CCTS-based, data exchange standards modeling and life-cycle
management tool. This strategy has been arguably very promising, as evidenced both by
industry uptake of our research results. Moreover, there are additional possible capabilities
that can contribute to even greater interoperability of enterprise systems. However, for the
CCTS- or a similar meta-model-based modeling framework, and a newly enabled tool to
have a full impact, new challenges need to be addressed. The paper discusses these
challenges for the data exchange standards-based systems integrations, identifying the current
state-of-the-art solutions and limitations. The paper also proposes future research directions
and strategies to enable advanced capabilities by building on both the already successful and
accepted technologies as well as new and emerging ones.
Keywords 1
Data exchange standards, meta-model, modeling framework, agility, robustness,
interoperability, networked enterprises.
1. Introduction
This paper focuses on the subset of systems integration problems typically found in the inter-
enterprise or business-to-business (B2B) integrations involving enterprise systems, supply chain
management systems, and, increasingly, analytical systems [1, 2]. These integration problems often
involve both (1) a large number and a large variety of enterprise information exchanges, and (2) a
large number of participants (such as in industrial supply chains). For that reason, they are very often,
if not always, addressed by developing a data exchange standard (DES) specification for the industrial
community and their networked ecosystem. In these integration problems, the information that is
exchanged is mostly well understood by the participating parties. However, because of the differences
between the implementations of the systems exchanging the data, there may be both significant as
well as subtle differences in data exchange standard interpretations and integration solutions that may
hinder valid data exchanges in the networks of participants.
Because of the significant heterogeneity of the exchanged data, the size of the network of the
participants, and large variations in systems implementations, the total cost of a manual effort to
develop, use, and manage traditional standards-based integration solutions is typically very large, if at
Proceedings of the Workshop of I-ESA’22, March 23–24, 2022, Valencia, Spain
EMAIL: nenad.ivezic@nist.gov (N. Ivezic); elena.jelisic@nist.gov (E. Jelisic); jankovicm@iti.gr (M. Jankovic);
boonserm.kulvatunyou@nist.gov (B. Kulvatunyou); diok@iti.gr (D. Kehagias); zoran.marjanovic@fon.bg.ac.rs (Z. Marjanovic)
ORCID: 0000-0003-1863-4370 (N. Ivezic); 0000-0002-4294-8313 (E. Jelisic); 0000-0002-7429-473X (B. Kulvatunyou); 0000-0002-6912-
3493 (D. Kehagias); 0000-0002-0929-686X (Z. Marjanovic)
© 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
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all feasible [3]. Past research efforts have tried to devise novel architectures to overcome the issues of
costly, inefficient traditional standards that rely on rudimentary development, use, and management
support. However, these strategies have been slow and ineffective, and proved to be infeasible in
terms of actual solution sustainment and engagement by industry [4]. In the past couple of years, new
research results have been delivered with a significant advancement in the state of art and practice in
data exchange standards life-cycle management [5]. The overall approach taken was to strengthen the
foundation of data exchange standards by including new concepts and methods to support new
capabilities. In other words, the general data modeling frameworks used in the traditional standards
for data exchange life-cycle management, such as the general XML modeling framework, have been
substituted with a more focused one that trades off the generality for important new capabilities.
The researchers propose a CCTS meta-model as a basis for a novel modeling framework [6]. The
meta-model introduces a new abstract data model with three essential new concepts. First, shared
data types are introduced to address both the need for conceptual, application domain-independent
data types, and the need for logical, application domain-specific data types [7]. Second, common data
structures are introduced that follow object-oriented view of the world, which aligns well with the
software applications’ view of the world, and also provides the needed expressiveness to deal with
proprietary data structures while doing away with constructs that are not relevant to typical
information exchange tasks. Third, a uniform method to classify business semantics is adopted,
allowing application domain - and integration situation-specific usage details of the standard to be
uniformly expressed from the lowest, basic data type level to the highest, composite data type level
(i.e., message or document type).
Using the latest CCTS modeling framework as the new foundation, the researchers created a new
development platform and tooling with new capabilities [8]. Score is an innovative open-source,
CCTS-based, data exchange standards modeling and life-cycle management tool developed to support
industry in adopting and using the latest advancements of the CCTS-based standards [9]. It has been
developed collaboratively between NIST and the OAGi business consortium and standards-
development organization. Score initially focused to address two key challenges in traditional data
exchange standards life cycle management: (1) the need for multiple expressions of data exchange
standard and capturing its usage specification; and (2) the need for efficient management of standards
documents for usage specification [10]. Next, we discuss the achieved and the new potential
capabilities, the enabling technologies, as well as the challenges we observe to achieve the
capabilities.
2. Novel capabilities, enabling technologies, and challenges
New capabilities and life-cycle management methods for advanced data exchange standards
require new enabling technologies. Figure 1 shows the relationship between enabling technologies
(left) and new capabilities (right).
Figure 1: Enabling Technologies and New Capabilities
Multiple standards expressions of both data exchange standards and their usage specifications
were needed as mobile and IoT devices required new data exchange syntactical formats, bringing the
JSON, OpenAPI Specification (OAS), and other representation schemas as new industrial
requirements [11]. Attempts to manage this multiple representation requirement by direct mappings
from one implementation technology, like XML, to others, like JSON and OAS, have been difficult.
One issue is that the standards and usage specifications expressed in one implementation-level
standard need to be in sync with other implementation-level standards, each of which may change at
any time, requiring such change to propagate to each syntactical expression. Instead, the new CCTS-
based Abstract Data model-based specification of data exchange standards and their usage together
with the Naming and Design Rules (NDR) for a specific expression language, provided for an easier
and more manageable path to automated generation of a new standard expression and its usage
specification for that particular language by providing a single abstract reference model [12]. A major
challenge was to transform a living data exchange standard into a novel CCTS-based data exchange
standard while continually supporting industry needs in the transition. This challenge has been
resolved by developing the Score tool that allowed transition by working closely with the OAGi
industry consortium and standards development organization [9].
Efficient standards contextualized document/message profiling (subsetting) has been needed
for many years. Standard messages or documents have grown tremendously in size, reflecting the
accumulated requirements for data exchange coming from an increasing number of participating
enterprise systems and cross-industry usage. Traditionally, the management of the large size of these
message or document standards has been dealt with in a completely manual and informal manner.
This is anything but feasible on a realistic scale, making the standards management inefficient and
costly. Instead, the new CCTS modeling framework enabled abstract class-based specification of data
exchange standards to be ‘assembled’ into a hierarchical, easy-to-review, select-from, and profile (i.e.,
subset) standards specification. The Common business semantics method and Basic Contextualization
allowed ad-hoc management of profiles, increasing the manageability of the standards and their usage
specification [13]. A major challenge was to provide a means for developers to utilize the
technologies in an efficient manner. This challenge has been resolved by developing the Score tool
that allowed meaningful and usable user interface by working with the OAGi industry consortium and
their member industry companies.
Standards specification reuse has been another long-term need that continues to grow in
importance as the standards continue to increase in size and complexity. Once enabled and optimized,
the reuse capability would help in achieving ease and efficiency of standards development and usage,
and also achieving higher-quality interoperability solutions. Traditional approaches could not address
this need as they typically only enable ad-hoc, locally defined standards specification store and reuse,
which lacked any ability to register and search for reusable specifications while providing assurance
of the quality of the reuse candidate. To enable reuse, the new CCTS approach envisions several
additional new technologies, including Concept Identification, Advanced Contextualization, Data
Components Specification Repository Management, Interface Specification as Data Components
Specification, and Business Semantics-based Message Design [14]. A major challenge is two-part: (1)
Development, use, maintenance, and validation of uniform, shareable application domain semantics to
enable computer-supported Advanced Contextualization; and (2) Development, use, maintenance, and
validation of formal conceptual model/ontology to enable computer-supported Concept Identification.
To resolve the challenge, we envision an experimental assessment of conceptual models / ontologies /
taxonomies in collaboration with Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF), OAGi, and industry partners
[15,16].
Decentralized standardization is a potential new capability that has presented itself as a radically
different way of managing standardization in the future. As Industry 4.0 seeks agile and resilient
processes, this puts growing pressure on the traditional, centralized life-cycle management (LCM)
processes that develop and maintain these standards in a centralized and inefficient fashion. With
advances in technology and data modeling, it is possible to reconsider these long-standing practices.
A CCTS meta-model-based approach could lead toward a decentralized standardization process
where the data exchange requirements for the participating parties are captured precisely and
completely by using a new method and an innovative architecture. With the new standardization
process, the time and cost needed to reach a broad consensus among many companies on the design of
each DES document schema is significantly reduced. The new approach envisions additional new
technologies, including Standard Mapping Interchange Language, Contextualized Semantic Mapping
Repository, and Mapping Specification Templates. A major challenge is two-part: (1) Development,
use, maintenance, and validation of uniform mapping interchange language that builds on the CCTS
meta-model, shareable with middleware platforms; and (2) Development, use, maintenance, and
validation of the Mapping Specification Templates that can provide efficient computer-based support
to the software developer. To resolve the challenge, we develop a prototype mapping interchange
language specification for its validation by industry and to be submitted to a standards development
organization. With such a language in place, we then plan to perform an experimental assessment of
the Mapping Specification Template solutions on a representative number of industrial use cases.
3. Conclusion
The paper has described existing and potential new capabilities obtained through (1) adopting the
ISO-approved Core Components Technical Specification (CCTS) meta-model as a basis for a new
data exchange modeling framework and (2) developing Score, which is an innovative open-source,
CCTS-based, data exchange standards modeling and life-cycle management tool. The technology that
exists today provides a foundation on which new technologies and capabilities can be reliably built
and tested. Ultimately, to assure industry engagement, leadership, and adoption of the technologies,
we expect such new technology development to need such a reliable foundation on which, in a sound
engineering way, the industry, standards development, and research organizations can consistently be
developing new capabilities through iterative propose-assess-adapt-deploy R&D advances.
4. Disclaimer
Any mention of commercial products is for information only; it does not imply recommendation or
endorsement by NIST.
5. Acknowledgements
Work reported in this paper has received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research
and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 952684 (project: IoTAC).
6. References
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