Object Management Group Chairs Update Technology Standards

BOSTON, Oct. 5, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- International technology standards consortium Object Management Group® (OMG®) announced important updates from its quarterly membership meeting, which took place online from September 2020. The chairs of OMG Task Forces (TFs) and Special Interest Groups (SIGs) presented updates about their standards work that will influence the future direction of technology, especially when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, cloud, finance, and retail.

Here is a summary of the accomplishments and work in process of OMG working groups:

"The Artificial Intelligence Platform Task Force is going to start developing an AI taxonomy or ontology, and continued to refine and prioritize its roadmap, helped by several thought-provoking presentations made during our meeting," said Claude Baudoin, Co-chair, Artificial Intelligence Platform Task Force and Owner and Principal Consultant at cébé IT and Knowledge Management.

"The Blockchain Platform Special Interest Group (PSIG) met jointly with the Middleware and Related Services (MARS) Platform Task Force (PTF) to provide updates and advances on upcoming standards initiatives. These include the IOTA Protocol RFC, the Linked Encrypted Transaction Streams (LETS) RFP and a new RFI for crypto based self-sovereign identity. Further discussion on each of these items took place when we met as the Blockchain PSIG later in the week, with new material added to a wiki to progress the Crypto Identities RFI," said Mike Bennett, IOTA Foundation, Co-chair, Blockchain PSIG.

"The BPM+ Health Community marked its first year since launch recapping the major accomplishments of the year and highlighting the transition from 'start-up' toward growth and sustainment activities. The workshop included a half-day 'jumpstart' educational session, providing an overview to modeling sharable workflows/pathways, a perspective on knowledge management and the role of digital health from the American College of Surgeons, an advanced modeling session tutorial, spotlights on health informatics capstone projects based around BPM+, and an international dialogue about the role of knowledge management in future-state health systems. As a public good, all sessions were recorded and are available on demand. The week was capped off with a presentation on the new governance and bylaws that will underpin the open Community of Practice. Matters are on-track for their adoption at the outset of 2021," said Ken Rubin, Executive Director, BPM+ Health.

"The Business Modeling & Integration (BMI) Domain Task Force continued to discuss several new specifications that will augment our capability to model business processes, cases, and decisions, as well as the pedigree and provenance of entities. The proponents of these specifications will prepare requests for proposals (RFPs) for such specifications, and plan to issue those RFPs at our next meeting," said Claude Baudoin, Co-chair, Business Modeling & Integration Domain Task Force and Owner and Principal Consultant at cébé IT and Knowledge Management.

"The Command, Control, Computing, Communications and Intelligence Domain Task Force (C4I DTF) presented, reviewed, and adopted the Open Architecture Radar Interface Specification (OARIS) 2.0 after receiving favorable approval by the AB and the DTF members and a vote-to-vote motion. We received a brief update on the progress of the UAF Profile for FACE and an overview of OARIS 3.0 RFP Concepts. The C4I DTF will be taking up an effort in the future to diagram how the various specifications from the C4I DTF 'notionally' fit together within a Combat Management System architecture," said Matt Wilson, Vice President, SimVentions, and Co-chair C4I DTF.

"The Cloud Working Group is forming smaller task groups to create discussion papers on Cyber Insurance and on Data Governance, and a Catalog of Cloud Standards. It has also compiled all the references cited in our existing 30+ guides and papers into a collected bibliography that will be issued at our December meeting," said Claude Baudoin, Co-chair of the Cloud Working Group and Owner and Principal Consultant at cébé IT and Knowledge Management.

"The Finance Design Task Force (FDTF) received updates on the extension of the Financial Instrument Global Identifier (FIGI) standard into the crypto assets space, with Kaiko to be designated as the Certified Provider for FIGIs in this space. We also had updates on plans for the next update of the Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO), and a lively discussion about the need for formal ontologies for business terms reference in finance, including a comparison of design approaches for reference ontologies," said Mike Bennett, EDM Council, Inc., Co-Chair, FDTF.

"Middleware and Related Services (MARS) Platform Task Force (PTF) issued an RFP to develop a specification for mapping IDL4 to C++, the third in a series of IDL4 mapping specifications produced by MARS since the adoption of IDL 4.0 in 2015. Our collaboration with the Open Group's FACE Consortium continues focusing on the interoperability issues vis-a-vis CORBA, DDS, and FACE's latest Transport Service Segment (TSS) specification. At our next meeting, we expect to recommend the adoption of four specifications: DDS-Time Sensitive Networks (TSN) Integration, Space Telecommunication Interface (STI) for Software Defined Radios (SDRs), TCP/IP PSM for DDS Interoperability, and Representational State Transfer (REST) for CORBA. We also expect to issue an RFP, prepared jointly with the Block Chain PSIG, for a Linked Encrypted Transaction Streams (LETS) specification," said Charlotte Wales, Co-chair of the Middleware and Related MARS PTF and Systems Engineer, Process Specialist, Jack Rabbit Consulting.

"The Ontology Platform Special Interest Group (PSIG) organized a special event entitled, 'Understanding Ontologies and Knowledge Graphs,' with 187 attendees that was well received according to attendee feedback. A presentation on the status of a new API standard for knowledge-based systems integration, called APIs for Knowledge Platforms (API4KP), was given by SIG members in the Analysis and Design Task Force Plenary Session, which will be recommended for adoption in December. The Ontology PSIG plenary met to consider requirements for ontology content quality, and automation and services that could assess ontology content against those requirements. It also discussed employing an ontology repository platform to make OMG ontological content easier to find and access," said Evan Wallace, electronic engineer at NIST and Co-chair of the Ontology PSIG.

"The Retail Domain Task Force (RDTF) started a new effort to address diversity, equity, and inclusion surrounding how we create and maintain our retail technology standards. Reinvigorated effort to simplify our Micro-Location in Retail specification using the IndoorGML coordinate system. Moving UnifiedPOS to a service-based model with Fiscal API, Digital Receipt, POS Printer, and work to support 'Beyond the UPC' with GS1-US and new data carriers like the Digimarc digital watermark," said Andy Mattice, Solutions Enablement, Lexmark, and Co-Chair RDTF.

"The Robotics Design Task Force (RDTF) approved to extend the RoSO timetable for half a year. The next meeting will be held in Q12021 (no meeting in 2020Q4)," said Koji Kamei, Senior Research Scientist, JARA, and Co-chair RDTF.

"The Systems Engineering Domain Special Interest Group (SE DSIG) held a half-day session that began with an overview and demonstration of the SST Initial Submission for SysML v2. This is a major milestone in the development of the next generation of the Systems Modeling Language. In addition, there were other presentations relevant to the practice of model-based systems engineering that included the Structured Assurance Case Metamodel (SACM), an upcoming OMG Standard for Integrating Safety & Reliability Analysis into MBSE, and MagicGrid: A Simplified SysML-based Approach for Modeling Complex Systems," said Sanford Friedenthal, Chair of the SE DSIG.

For more information, please watch Results and Next Steps from OMG Sept. 2020 Technical Meeting on October 22, 2020 at 11:00 am ET. The next OMG Technical Meeting runs from December 7-11, 2020. Guests are welcome to register and attend OMG Technical Meetings with OMG management approval.

For a full list of OMG works in progress, visit https://www.omg.org/public_schedule/.
To participate in OMG specifications, visit https://www.omg.org/memberservices/index.htm.

About OMG
The Object Management Group® (OMG®) is an international, open membership, not-for-profit technology standards consortium with representation from government, industry and academia. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a wide range of technologies and an even wider range of industries. OMG's modeling standards enable powerful visual design, execution and maintenance of software and other processes. Visit http://www.omg.org for more information.

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SOURCE Object Management Group