OSLCFest covered themes such as business value, integration technology and data models.
OSLC stands for Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration, an open community originally initiated in 2008 for the purpose of enabling data connectivity and interoperability, facilitating integration across domains and reducing the need for duplication. OSLC regroups concepts and conventions for data sharing, integration and exchange, connecting multiple real-time data sources to enhance collaboration while maintaining master data principles.
Since 2018, OASIS Open and OSLC have organized annual events to share knowledge and build awareness about OSLC. The events cover data traceability use cases, tools and technologies. As described on their website, “OASIS was founded under the name SGML Open in 1993. It began as a consortium of vendors and users devoted to developing guidelines for interoperability among products that support the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). The consortium changed its name to OASIS in 1998 to reflect an expanded scope of technical work.”
This year, the third edition of the OSLCFest brought together about 40 speakers from academia and industry to discuss and showcase research work and practical case studies about building a digital thread as part of digital engineering transformation. The event covered themes such as:
- How to build value from integration.
- How to connect Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) with Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM).
- How to build effective business analytics.
- How to manage integrated change across multiple interlinked enterprise data sets.
- How to enhance cross-disciplinary collaboration, data exchange, compliance, requirements management and closed-loop digital twin integration.
In this post, I elaborate on some of the discussion points and presentations from this event. Since several OSLCFest presentations are quite technical, the focus here will be on concepts and potential opportunities when using these standards and principles.
OSLC is focusing on ALM-PLM integration, part and document management, leveraging SysML-based modelling for interface specification, with associated integrated change management, based on the underlying concept of data coexistence. In other words, multiple data sources that coexist and are integrated based on master data management principles. These principles include data integrity, data governance, change management and accountability, traceability and auditability. This directly relates to enterprise architecture and business-led data governance, which is often wrongly assumed to be an IT job.
Implementing OSLC-based platform bridges combines the use of service provider catalogues and relevant data linkage tools and technologies, which enables building services contracts to link data model across platforms through the concept of re-use. When it comes to integrating multiple enterprise systems, OSLC focuses on data linkages (coexistence), whereas Product Life Cycle Support (PLCS) focused on data exchange standards. These standards are based on an integrated neutral data model, extending the ISO 10303 (STEP) standard with the Application Protocol 239 (specific to PLCS).
Moving Towards More Data Modularity and Traceability
During OSLCFest 2021, Jim Amsden (IBM) and Andrew Berezovskyi (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) presented a status update and directions for 2022 for the OSLC Open Project. Several refreshers were issued this year as candidate OASIS standards (COS): core data model, query, configuration, change and requirements for quality management. 2022 should see further alignment of OSLC and SysML v2, as well as specifications for cross-platform action integration, reporting and further automation.
Many more specifications reside under the Open Project umbrella for development and are yet to be initiated, such as asset management, performance monitoring, data reconciliation, estimation and measurement.
Erik Herzog and Asa Nordling Larsson (SAAB) presented an interesting perspective, based on a system engineering development approach at SAAB Aeronautics, towards the need for:
- Better deliverable management and cross-discipline integration.
- More robust product modularity and change management.
- More efficient data traceability based on OSLC standards to drive requirement traceability across configured item structures, versions and baselines.
OSLC-based Connectors and Use Cases
Other presentations highlighted a similar Digital Thread requirement to support product quality management by using OSLC to deliver the required traceability in the automotive industry, per regulatory standards such as ISO 26262 and the Automotive Spice (ASPICE).
In this context, Christoph Bergner (MID GmbH) highlighted the value of linking SysML tools with integrated development environments (IDE) to track software delivery against requirements, use and test cases, and issue traceability throughout.
In addition, Damir Nesic (Scania CV AB) expanded on the importance of upcoming standards and legislation, such as ISO 26262, ISO 21434 or ISO 5083. These standards require the creation of an insurance case to explicitly cover safety and cybersecurity required with the rise of intelligent transport systems and upcoming autonomous vehicles. In his presentation, Nesic illustrated the potential for a “linked data” information layer to multiple data sources with OSLC connectors (with core semantics to map the relevant objects and attributes across sources).
This approach assumes an abstraction level overlaying multiple systems, allowing for selected data only to be consumed for specific use cases, reducing data duplication by only processing the required information, at the required frequency. It does not eliminate the need for data integration, a definite pre-requisite. It also promotes the need for selective source data model mapping and the reduction of heavy customization across legacy IT tools and systems.
Another interesting case study that caught my attention was a presentation from Sunil Kaklij (Scania) regarding leveraging Resource Description Framework (RDF) and OSLC technology across truck platforms and brands across part of the Traton Group, which includes Scania, MAN Truck and Bus, and Navistar International. Kaklij described the value of graph modelling to process multi-source data, keeping the “end-user view (…) in mind, using ontology design to ensure better query performance” and including a plea for better development tools and plugins to support:
- Modularity.
- Federated approach where master data and users remain primarily in own systems.
- Automated data exchange.
- Multi-brand solution with associated access control.
- Data sharing and correlation traceability.
Dr. Graham Bleakley (Costain UK Ltd.) illustrated a technical assurance use case covering Building Information Management (BIM), PLM and ERP integration across PDM and CAD data, project management data and requirements. Bleakley highlighted the lack of standardized integration tools beyond basic data exports and basic Power BI analytics.
Despite BIM and OSLC being aligned to similar data management principles—though using different terminologies—there are significant opportunities to expand OSLC beyond its current basic scope and develop more advanced integrated configuration and change management solutions.
Other vendor presentations illustrated further functional and technical use cases for managing item versions and configuration, and OSLC deployment considerations across enterprise cloud-to-cloud linkages. For example, refer to informative presentations from Robert Baillargeon (SodiusWillert) and Sebastien Boucard (Sodius), just to name a few.
Further information can be found on the OSLCFest website, including presentations from OSLCFest 2018 and 2020, which expand on the purpose of OSLC and its applications:
- “OSLC is an initiative to standardize the backbone for the web of data.”
- “OSLC merges concepts of Linked Data and Hypermedia REST APIs to enable the web of data. OSLC provides open standards to achieve a uniform interface to different data sources (e.g., different databases, repositories, applications, files) and enable the connectivity of data between different data sources.”
- “OSLC is supported by products of many vendors such as IBM, Siemens, PTC, Tasktop, Kovair, Sodius, Maplessoft, MID, pure-systems and many more.”
What are your thoughts?
