The ISO/IEC 11179 family of specifications introduces a standard model for meta-data registries to increase the interoperability of applications with the use of common data elements. Jena based implementation of a standard meta-data registry, brings semantic processing and reasoning capabilities on top of the common data elements and their consumer applications.
ISO 11179 defines a meta-data registry (MDR); describes how to describe data, store data, classify data and manage data. The standard follows a bottom-up strategy; registers common data elements to the registry, then builds the larger elements by aggregation and association of these elements. It can be seen as an early implementation of the semantic requirements for the data interoperability of different applications, hence enterprises. The standard exhibits a relational data model which describes the MDR through entity-relationship diagrams. However, current experience states that data is becoming very big with several inter-links, and data management paradigms change in order to be able to process such linked data. On the other hand, semantic technologies based on RDF processing and ontology reasoning exhibits more advanced semantic processing options for the sake of interoperability.
This talk introduces a Jena based implementation of a standard meta-data registry/repository which brings semantic processing capabilities on top of the Common Data Elements. Processing linked data through a common data element repository which is backed by Jena TDB, not only preserves the relational nature of the standard MDR model, but also exposes the non-relational features of the linked data. Hence, reasoning and other semantic functionalities are provided at the back-end implementation while hiding the triple-store related details from the API consumer.