Don't Neglect the Data! Data Modeling for Interoperable Systems The best way to architect your distributed system while driving down integration costs is to design your system of systems around one key property: inherent interoperability. But your design approach must embrace legacy systems. After all, you almost never start with a clean sheet of paper. Achieving interoperability is challenging for many reasons. Mainly, it's poorly understood and specified, and current design and architecture approaches never take the single most important thing into consideration: the data. Architecting your data is arguably more important than architecting your applications if you want your distributed system of systems to meet the requirement for semantic interoperability. Once you understand the movement and definition of data in a system, you can tackle almost any integration problem. This webinar covers how to begin to analyze and understand interoperability. It also lays the groundwork for data modeling that ultimately helps architect and design your systems for inherent interoperability. Speaker: Lacey Rae Trebaol Lacey Rae Trebaol began her engineering career at Brown and Caldwell, working on water and waste-water treatment system specification and design before transitioning to Northrop Grumman. At Northrop, she worked as Lead System Engineer on multiple IR&Ds and CR&Ds focusing on data architecture, data modeling and software integration to enable semantic interoperability among disparate systems. As a System Engineer at RTI, she actively participates in multiple standards organizations, including FACE and UCS. A link to the recorded webinar can be found here: http://www.rti.com/mk/webinars.html

1. Your systems. Working as one.
Don’t Neglect the Data!
Data Modeling for Interoperable Systems
Lacey Rae Trebaol
20 March 2013

2. Context

3. Topics
• Systems, Integration, and Interoperability
• Data Modeling for Interoperable Systems
• RTI Products and Services
• Q&A

4. Systems

5. Systems

6. Systems

7. Systems

8. Integration
The process of linking together different computing systems and software
applications physically or functionally, to act as a coordinated whole.

9. Integration

10. Integratability
Integratability is the ability for some combination of systems to come
together and form, coordinate, or blend into a functioning or unified
whole.

11. Interoperation
The setup of components and methods to make two or more systems
work together as a combined system.

12. Interoperation

13. Interoperation

14. System of Systems
A system of systems is a collection of task-oriented or dedicated systems
that pool their resources and capabilities together to create a new, more
complex system which offers more functionality and performance than
simply the sum of the constituent systems.

15. Interoperability
Interoperability is the ability for systems, units, or forces to provide
services to and accept services from other systems, units, or forces, and
to use the services so exchanged to enable them to operate effectively
together.

16. Levels of Conceptual Interoperability

17. Technical Interoperability
• Requires
– Communications
Infrastructure established
• Result
– Bits & Bytes are exchanged
in an unambiguous manner
• Non-Functional Need Met
– Replaceability 
Interchangeability
доброе
утро
おはよ
う

18. Syntactic Interoperability
• Requires
– Communications
Infrastructure established
– Common structure or
common data format for
exchanging information
• Result
– Bits/Bytes and the
Structure of Data are
exchanged in an
unambiguous manner
• Non-Functional Need Met
– Interchangeability and
Integratability
What was her
temperature?
37.2
Get the
warming
blankets.

19. Semantic Interoperability
• Required
– Communications
Infrastructure and Common
Data Format are established
– Common information model
is defined for exchanging the
meaning of information
• Result
– Bits/Bytes and the structure
of data are exchanged in an
unambiguous manner
– Content of the information
exchanged is unambiguously
defined
• Non-Functional Need Met
– Actual, high-level
Interoperability
The apple is
orange and
yellow.
What does that
have to do with
her surgery?
Oh! I
thought we
were talking
about food.
She didn’t
need
surgery.

20. Data Modeling for Interoperable
Systems

21. Model
A model is anything used in any way to represent something else

22. Data Model
A data model is a representation that describes the data about the things
that exist in your domain

23. Systems of Systems are Different
System
of
Systems
[n] types of
systems
[n]sets of
requirements +
the requirement
for Semantic
Interoperability
many things to
express
many different
representations of
those expressions
to achieve
interoperability

24. The SOS Data Model Shall…
1. Meet the requirements of all of the constituent systems
2. Support the overarching requirement for Semantic
Interoperability
3. Allow for changes to be made to the model without requiring
changes to the existing system and application interfaces that use
it
Formal
Language
Rigorous
Documentation
Formal Process
1. 2. 3.
We Need A Formal Approach!

25. Formal Language for Data Modeling
• Similar to
structured, rigoro
us programming
languages
• Ambiguity is not
acceptable
– Syntax
– Semantics
Formal
Language
Alphabet
Transformation
Rules
Formation
Rules

26. Semantics, Ambiguity, and Language
Natural Language
Representation
• A pair of shoes that Claire
wants costs 1500 dollars.
She waits until the shoes go
on sale. She can spend 450
dollars, including 8.25% tax.
On Monday, the shoe store
discounts everything by
50%. Each day an item is not
sold, it is discounted
another 25%. How soon can
Claire buy her shoes?
Formal Language Representation
Pc = $1500...
Pc =
$1500´ 1+ 0.0825( )
or
$1500
ì
í
ïï
î
ï
ï
=
$1,623.75
or
$1,500.00
t = tbuywhen P £ $450
@t =1, P = Pc ´ 1- 0.5( )
ì
í
ï
î
ï
=
$811.88
or
$750.00
@t ³ 2, P = Pc ´ 1- 0.5( )éë ùû´ t -1( )´ 0.75éë ùû
ì
í
ï
î
ï
=...

27. Documentation Methodology
• Documenting only your
messages is insufficient
• Documentation doesn’t
end at the data model
– Your system
– Key decisions
– Context

28. Formal Process
• Mandates are
insufficient with so
many stakeholders
• Can’t dictate
everything, must
accommodate many
things
• SOS DM needs to
enforce rigorous well
defined processes, not
mandate messages
Atomic Elements
Elements
of
Meaning

29. Putting the Pieces Together
Things to
Model from
System A
Data Model
Data Modeling Process
Structure
Behavior
Context
representation
A
representation
A
representation
[n]
per a
Rigorous and Formal
Approach

30. Data Centric Integration Solution
Legacy System A
Mediation
Future System C
Mediation
New System B
Mediation
• Technical
Interoperability
– Infrastructure &
Protocol
• Syntactic
Interoperability
– Common Data
Structure
• Semantic
Interoperability
– Common Data
Definition

31. RTI Products and Services

32. RTI’s Data Centric Integration Solution
Connext DDS Professional
DDS-RTPS Wire Interoperability
Messaging
Real-Time Apps
Disparate
Apps/Systems
Integrator
Tools
Administration
Monitoring
Recording
Replay
LoggingSystem Viz
• Connext DDS
– Wire
Interoperability
– Xtypes
• Connext Integrator
– Mediation
• Future Evolutions
– More powerful
– More flexible
– More systems.
Working as 1.

33. Q&A

34. Your systems. Working as one.
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