Belgium’s Kruispuntbank & Okkam

By Stijn Christiaens | January 31, 2010

I recently posted a link to the Datanews article on the Kruispuntbank’s 20 year anniversary (Dutch, French), stating in a tweet that Okkam seems to be one of the few initiatives to deliver a similar infrastructure in the world of the semantic web. I received the following question:

Question via Twitter
Question via Twitter

The Kruispuntbank (or Crossroads Bank for Social Security – abbreviated as CBSS) is an infrastructural initiative by Frank Robben in a successful attempt to significantly reduce the administrative burden that existed in Belgium’s social security system (one of the best in the world). Next to all of the different services it provides (e.g., reduction of paper forms, information security and privacy protection, statistical information for policy makers, … more on their website), the CBSS also offers an identification mechanism for people and companies. Using bus mechanisms by Corvé or FEDICT, different government (and other) bodies can collect pieces of data from different sources, and combine them based on those identifiers.

Okkam's razor
Okkam’s razor

Okkam is a research project and technology focused at managing identifiers for just about anything you can imagine (beyond people and companies). Much as the Domain Name System or DNS (and all its proprietary or open implementation) is an important piece of infrastructure for the Web, Okkam’s Entity Name System (or ENS) will be an important piece of infrastructure for a Web that you can query in a structured way.

In my view, what the Kruispuntbank (or at least the identification mechanism part of it) did for Belgium’s administration (and all of its data interoperability issues), Okkam can do for a much broader audience. Its more decentralized approach comes with its own set of problems, which are taken care of by more fuzzy techniques. The open approach, the available API, and the foundation are all strong means to help Okkam realize its goals.

On a side note: Flanders’ Ministry of Innovation, Economy and Science (one of Collibra’s customers for business semantics, e.g., see here) is actively looking into Okkam as a technology to help them realize their identifier issues.

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Help your IT “archaelogists” ahead…

By Stijn Christiaens | January 30, 2010

Maya glyph
Mayan glyph

I recently watched a National Geographic episode on the Mayans. It seems archaelogists are still digging up old Mayan pyramids, with amazing finds. One of the more difficult tasks encountered in studying this culture, is trying to analyze their symbols, written on walls, stone, cups and all sorts of items.

I was struck by one of the statements in there. Apparently, it can easily take decades to try and decode these symbols, in an attempt to assign meaning to them. See also here for another quote on this:

The Mayans recorded their history in hieroglyphics, a writing system that used pictures and certain symbols. Archaeologists today are still trying to decode the many hieroglyphics found on religious temples, stairs, and the walls of homes and palaces.

Random OWL sample, taken from random Swoogle search result for "owl"
Random OWL sample, taken from random Swoogle search result for “owl”

It seems to me, much of the work that these researchers perform, is also done in a very ad-hoc fashion within organizations, when they are trying to decipher the glyphs found in their information systems (whether in relational databases, cobol copybooks, edi files, xml or even rdf/owl files – e.g., see “Data smoke and mirrors”). While the original glyph authors have not passed away a very long time ago, it is very likely that they might not be found anymore within the organization.

The work performed on the Mayan glyphs is sponsored through government funding, research programmes, National Geographic and many other sources. I wonder who pays for the organizational archaelogists…

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Metadata Governance & Architecture Roadmap for Flemish Government: Sneak Preview

By Pieter De Leenheer | January 13, 2010

(repost from here )

For their X-mas, we delivered a Metadata Governance and Architecture Roadmap to the Flemish Ministry of Education and Training. Frans Decuyper, CIO of the Flemish Ministry of Education made the following quote about our work:

“Collibra’s metadata roadmap has become a fantastic tool and a bible for the Flemish Ministry of Education’s metadata initiatives for the coming 5 years. It deserves to be interwoven into the government’s new ICT multi-year plan.”

Currently, I am summarising all the material in a 3000-words article. From the draft I generated a sneak preview with Wordle (in Dutch but with many anglicisms).
Wordle: Enterprise Knowledge Management
To be continued..

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Mark Twain’s refinement in Business Semantics Management

By Stijn Christiaens | January 9, 2010

According to Pieter, Business Semantics Management (BSM) is:

the set of activities to bring business stakeholders together to collaboratively realize the reconciliation of their heterogeneous metadata; and consequently the application of the derived business semantics patterns to establish semantic alignment between the underlying data structures.

Business Semantics Management

Business Semantics Management

The picture above gives a good overview of the two different phases (semantic reconciliation and semantic application). I will not go into the details here (they can be found on Collibra’s website). Where Mark Twain comes in, is the Refine activity in the Semantic Reconciliation phase.

Whereas the first activity (Create) is focused at divergence (assembling different perspectives), Refinement is the first step toward convergence. It consists of applying a set of clear rules on the created semantic artifacts in order to harmonize them for a better semantic fit in your organizational community. By default, BSM offers a set of general rules (following the CURE principles – Complete, Reusable, Elegant, Useful), which range from basic (e.g., natural language above cryptic coding abbreviations) to more complex (e.g., objectification). This is a required first set, and your organization should roll its own on top of it to integrate in its overall organizational and cultural ecosystem.

I came across the following piece of text from Mark Twain (originally found at Caltech):

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
by Mark Twain

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter “c” would be dropped to be replased either by “k” or “s”, and likewise “x” would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which “c” would be retained would be the “ch” formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform “w” spelling, so that “which” and “one” would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish “y” replasing it with “i” and Iear 4 might fiks the “g/j” anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez “c”, “y” and “x” — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais “ch”, “sh”, and “th” rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Learning from this is easy: build your own organizational set of refinement rules, and apply them … or suffer your own little “Ingliy-spiking werld”.

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Small semantic difference at “Bank van de Post”

By Stijn Christiaens | January 9, 2010

One euro can be many things

One euro can be many things

Earlier this week, datanews reported on an error that happened at Belgium’s Bank van de Post. The bank paid a couple of hundred thousands of customers a double premium, and had to reclaim the money. The source of the issue was the “aangroeipremie” (growth premium), which changed into the “getrouwheidspremie” (loyalty premium) on April 1st 2009 according to a European directive.

Read more in datanews.

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Magritte Flirting with Semantics

By Pieter De Leenheer | January 6, 2010
…or to be more precise “Rene Magritte flirting with semiotics”. I spent my lazy Sunday (according to my sense of the word) at the new Rene Magritte Museum in Brussels (not to be confused with his birthplace house which is also a smaller museum about his life).

Magritte went through various phases of “his” interpretation of surrealism expressing what he calls the inexpressible. The common thread was the study of the function between words (or signs) and images (syntax), scientifically called semiotics. One masterpiece (see below; produced in the context of a NYC exposition) performs a methodological exploration of the construction of a semiotic tetrahedron.
A semiotic tetrahedron is a quadrangular commutative diagram that is constructed when an actor perceives a physical object (say a cat) in the domain, consequently renders a mental conception of this perceived object, and finally chooses a representation for his conception (say the string “yojo”). Semantics is defined by the relationship between an object and the object that represents it. An actor’s ontology is a representation of all conceptions the actor believes are observable, hence exist, in the domain plus their inter-relationships (which are also conceptions). Representations (either orally uttered or in written form) are essential for actors to socialize their observations and so, by learning from others’, to refine their interpretation of the world.
To facilitate this process, although they share the same physical world, actors have to align their representations of the domain. In other words they must reconcile (parts of) their ontologies to build a common language. E.g., they plausibly do not speak the same language hence not share the same word for referring to a cat. As computer systems need to communicate though formal languages, solving this ontology construction problem is one of the most important routes of research in information and Web sciences. It is the core of business semantics management and Collibra.

The masterpiece (translated from the original in French) is depicted below (originally published in La Revolution Surrealiste in 1929. Found in Conceptual Art by Tony Godfrey, Phaidons). In 18 combinations of semiotic tetrahedrons, he prescribes a methodology for interpreting his paintings being complex semiotic puzzles. E.g., the first one illustrates synonymy. Check the second row: the first one is not about the boot or the sea, but about the inexpressible emotion that emerges when conceiving the objects and their relationships altogether. The second on the third row makes the remarkable observation that not everything can be represented. Indeed, wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen. Finally, the third on the second row shows a perfect example of a semiotic tetrahedron.

Another famous example is La Trahison des Images (1929). This painting that represents a pipe, and states “ceci n’est pas une pipe”: indeed its is merely Magritte’s personal representation for a pipe. Moreover, this very particular representation is contingent on its state of being at the moment of painting. This state includes signs like his mood, the room he was in, the absence of his wife… Any small phenomenon in his state of being influences the very colour tone or shape of the pipe painting. This is illustrated by the many pipes he painted. Many of them also have arbitrary signs (words or images) surrounding the “pipe”, by which he wants to show us that these signs (as part of the painting process also forming part of the actual state of being), have influenced the representation. Ironically this is one of his most realistic paintings :-)

From Horta and Hergé to Knopff and Delvaux, Brussels has many hidden secrets to discover. But the top of surrealism is found in the Magritte Museum. If you have a couple of hours do not hesitate to visit all three stores. We booked out visit in advance on-line, which is highly recommended.
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“Three reasons why you need data governance”

By Felix Van de Maele | December 28, 2009

David Linthicum recently posted a brief article at ebizQ on Data Governance: Three Reasons why you Need Data Governance – Leveraging Information and Intelligence

It’s an insightful piece that clearly articulates the need for data governance. In short:

  1. Data management in global 2000 companies is a nightmare which poses a risk.
  2. Security requires data goverance
  3. The move towards SOA and Cloud computing increases the need for strong data governance processes.

I especially like (and agree with) David’s third point. For one, organizations that are serious about implementing SOA are quickly confronted with the need for what is often called an “enterprise information model” or “canonical model”. (I believe David uses the more academic term “ontology”, see his post on vertical and horizontal ontologies here) Implementing these come with quite the challenges however. See our article on “Challenges with a canonical data model approach” and our white paper “Business Semantics for effective Application Integration and SOA“.

Collibra’s Data Governance solution nicely address this needs by managing and governing your business definitions, facts and rules on a business level, using OMG’s natural-language based SBVR standard. Collibra’s SOA solution enables you to leverage this enterprise information model (which we call “Business Semantics”) operationally by generating semantic data transformation and validation services which you can easily deploy on your existing infrastructure (Collibra is Oracle partner, and has running integrations with Microsoft’s BizzTalk and SAP’s Netweaver stack).


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Business semantics: from business definitions to operational integration

By Stijn Christiaens | November 26, 2009

I gave a presentation on Collibra business semantics at yesterday’s DAMA BeLux conference (see an earlier blog post for more details on the agenda). The title of that presentation was “Business Semantics: from Business Definitions to Operational Integration”. The abstract:

The field of semantics has a long history, both philosophically as well as in its more recent adoption in Information Systems. The challenge of semantics is in solving the search for meaning. In business terms, this translates into clear definitions of key business assets. In operational terms, this translates into technical models and making sure that the (meta)data is understood and aligned.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is leading the “Semantic Web” and “Linked Data” initiatives, which promote various XML-based recommendations for semantics: RDF (Resource Description Framework) and OWL (Web Ontology Language). This work has been aligned with Object Management Group’s (OMG’s) recently approved standard to describe the semantics of business vocabularies, business facts and business rules (SBVR). It is clear that these can benefit from new developments such as the Social Web and Web 2.0, which provide fresh insights into the issues in semantics, and vice versa.
This presentation will provide an overview of the field of semantics, where we are now, and where we are going. It will explain how semantic technology becomes relevant to solve core issues in information management, how semantics can be used from business all the way to operational ICT, and how professional communities inside and outside enterprises can manage their ontologies in a ‘Business Semantics Glossary’.

I uploaded the presentation to Slideshare (which does seem to digest Apple’s Keynote format well) so you can access it below. I will post a link to the other presentations as soon as they become available.

View more presentations from Collibra.

Jan Henderyckx from Envizion managed to shoot some pictures. You can find them via his twitter account (or just follow these links: attentive audience and shot at a bad time). The conference was a great experience, with interesting presentations and discussions. Definitely worth repeating. Thanks for the DAMA BeLux guys for organizing this.

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Assessing organizational readiness … and beyond

By Stijn Christiaens | November 12, 2009

A couple of days ago, I got the question what it takes for organizations to adopt business semantics. Except for a set of good semantic tools backed by an agile and step-wise methodology, the organization also has to have a certain information maturity level. The Meta Group (acquired by Gartner) defined an Information Maturity Model (IMM), which is well described in MIKE2.0, an open source methodology for Information Management. Its five levels are pictured below.

Information Maturity Model
Information Maturity Model

All it takes for an organization is to reach about a 2.5 (which is a 2 with some core people thinking about 3) on the above scale to be ready for business semantics. A brief explanation about the levels (as taken from MIKE2.0):

  • A Level 2 organisation has little in the way of enterprise information management practices. However, certain departments are aware of the importance of professionally managing information assets and have developed common practices used within their projects. At the enterprise level, a level 2 organization reacts to data quality issues as they arise.
  • A Level 3 organisation has a significant degree of information management maturity. Enterprise awareness, policies, procedures, and standards exist and are generally utilized across all enterprise projects. At level 3, the information management practices are sponsored by and managed by IT.

Starting with business semantics will actually help moving an organization from its 2.5 position to a higher level. Collibra’s toolset assists in increasing that level by stimulating reuse, uncovering which people are related to what concepts, bringing insight, lowering barriers to improve enterprise awareness and increasing the need for policies and procedures.

Increasing your information management capabilities means your organization has better control over its information, and issues such as semantic interoperability are resolved easily. Of course, no organization stands alone in todays economy: value chains are everywhere, everybody has customers and suppliers, and everybody needs to report something to someone. So having your organization information-ready is one thing, but having things run as smoothly at an inter-organizational level is another.

Standards organizations can help, but rather than defining large and meticulously crafted structures, they would be better of manufacturing industry semantics. This way, they can help all organizations in the business ecosystem increase their information maturity, thereby optimizing information logistics and increasing efficiency.

Would this count as a level 6?

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Collibra @ DAMA BeLux seminar

By Stijn Christiaens | November 9, 2009
DAMA International

On Wednesday, November 25th, DAMA BeLux organizes their next conference. This time, it is hosted by Deloitte and SAP, and the event is held at the SAP Lounge in Vilvoorde (Laurent-Benoit Dewezplein 5, Vilvoorde).

The agenda is strong, and contain traces of semantics here and there:

The event is closed with a presentation by Mr. Vincent Van Quickenborne, Belgian Minister for Innovation and Simplification.

You can register (and find more details) at the DAMA BeLux website: http://www.dama-belux.org.

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