Business semantics management

Business semantics management [1][2] (BSM) encompasses the technology, methodology, organization,
and culture that brings 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[3] between the underlying data structures.

BSM is established by two complementary process cycles each grouping a number of activities. The first
cycle is the semantic reconciliation cycle, and the second cycle is the semantic application cycle. The two
cycles are tied together by the unification process. This double process cycle is iteratively applied until an
optimal balance of differences and commonalities between stakeholders are reached that meets the semantic
integration requirements. This approach is based on research on community-based ontology
engineering[1][2] that is validated in European projects, government and industry.

Semantic reconciliation
Semantic reconciliation is a process cycle constituted of four subsequent activities: scope, create, refine, and
articulate. First, the community is scoped: user roles and affordances are appointed. Next, relevant facts are
collected from documentation such as, e.g., natural language descriptions, (legacy) logical schemas, or
other metadata and consequently decomposing this scope in elicitation contexts. The deliverable of scoping
is an initial upper common ontology that organizes the key upper common patterns that are shared and
accepted by the community. These upper common patterns define the current semantic interoperability
requirements of the community. Once the community is scoped, all stakeholders syntactically refine and
semantically articulate these upper common patterns.

Unification
During unification, a new proposal for the next version of the upper common ontology is produced,
aligning relevant parts from the common and divergent stakeholder perspectives. If the semantic
reconciliation results in a number of reusable language-neutral and context-independent patterns for
constructing business semantics that are articulated with informal meaning descriptions, then the unification
is worthwhile.

Semantic application
Semantic application is a process cycle constituted of two subsequent activities: select and commit where
the scoped information systems are committed to selected consolidated business semantic patterns. This is
done by first selecting relevant patterns from the pattern base. Next, the interpretation of this selection is
semantically constrained. Finally, the various scoped sources and services are mapped on (read: committed
to) this selection. The selection and axiomatization of this selection should approximate the intended
business semantics. This can be verified by automatically verbalization into natural language, and validation
of the unlocked data. Validation or deprecation of the commitments may result in another iteration of the
semantic reconciliation cycle.

Business semantics
Business semantics [1] are the information concepts that live in the organization, understandable for both
business and IT. Business semantics describe the business concepts as they are used and needed by the
business instead of describing the information from a technical point of view.

One important aspect of business semantics is that they are shared between many disparate data sources.
Many data sources share the same semantics but have different syntax, or format to describe the same
concepts.

The way these business semantics are described is less important. Several approaches can be used such as
Unified Modeling Language or object-role modeling. This corresponds to Robert Meersman's statement
that semantics are "a (set of) mapping(s) from your representation language to agreed concepts (objects,
relationships, behavior) in the real-world".[4] In the construction of information systems, semantics have
always been crucial, also a concept known as double articulation. In previous approaches, these semantics
were left implicit (i.e. In the mind of reader or writer), hidden away in the implementation itself (e.g., in a
database table or column code) or informally captured in textual documentation.[5] According to Dave
McComb, "The scale and scope of our systems and the amount of information we now have to deal with
are straining that model."[6]

Nowadays, information systems need to interact in a more open manner, and it becomes crucial to formally
represent and apply the semantics these systems are concerned with.[7]

Application
Business semantics management empowers all stakeholders in the organization by a consistent and aligned
definition of the important information assets of the organization.

The available business semantics can be leveraged in the so-called business/social layer of the organization.
They can for example be coupled to a content management application to provide the business with a
consistent business vocabulary or enable better navigation or classification of information, leveraged by
enterprise search engines to make richer semantic web ready websites, etc..

Business semantics can also be used to increase operational efficiency in the technical/operation layer of the
organization. It provides an abstracted way to access and deliver data in a more efficient manner. In that
respect, it is similar to Enterprise Information Integration (EII) with the added benefit that the shared models
are not described in technical terms but in a way that is easily understood by the business.

See also
Business process management
Conceptual schema
Data integration
DOGMA, a research project at Vrije Universiteit Brussel concerned with the more general
aspects of extracting, storing, representing and browsing information
Enterprise information integration
 Master data management
Ontology
Ontology double articulation
Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules
XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language), a freely available framework for
exchanging business information

References
1. De Leenheer, P.; Christiaens, S.; Meersman, R. (2010). "Business semantics management:
A case study for competency-centric HRM". Computers in Industry. 61 (8): 760–775.
doi:10.1016/j.compind.2010.05.005 (https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.compind.2010.05.005).
2. De Leenheer, Pieter (2009). On community-based Ontology Evolution (Thesis). Vrije
Universiteit Brussel.
3. "Information Management Resources - Information Management" (http://www.information-ma
nagement.com/media/pdfs/collibra.pdf) (PDF).
4. Sheth, Amit (1997). "Data Semantics: what, where and how?". Proceedings of the 6th IFIP
Working Conference on Data Semantics (DS-6). Chapman and Hall. pp. 601–610.
5. Morgan, Tony (2005). "Expressing Business Semantics" (https://web.archive.org/web/20080
513124737/http://www.eswc2005.org/documents/ESWC2005_TonyMorgan_ExpressingBusi
nessSemantics.pdf) (PDF). Presentation at the European Semantic Web Conference (2005).
Archived from the original (http://www.eswc2005.org/documents/ESWC2005_TonyMorgan_
ExpressingBusinessSemantics.pdf) (PDF) on 13 May 2008. Retrieved 23 November 2008.
6. DMReview.com. "Why is Business Semantics the New Hot Topic?" (https://web.archive.org/
web/20090105124316/http://www.dmreview.com/dmdirect/20050211/1019819-1.html).
Archived from the original (http://www.dmreview.com/dmdirect/20050211/1019819-1.html)
on 5 January 2009. Retrieved 23 November 2008.
7. De Leenheer, Pieter (1 January 2007). "Context dependency management in ontology
engineering: a formal approach" (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1768269.1768273). Journal
of Data Semantics. VIII: 26–56.

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