I am pleased to announce that the RFP for Semantic Information Modeling for Federation (SIMF) has been issued by the object management group. I would like to thank all those that have helped to get us to that stage with an extra thanks to Ed Seidewitz for the latest rewrite and presentation to OMG that helped us get it issued as well as to Sjir Nijssen for his determination and support.
SIMF provides for conceptual information modeling, logical information modeling and model bridging relations. The RFP asks for textual and graphical languages as well as bridges to multiple existing information and data modeling standards grounded in formal logic. The SIMF standard will provide for standard tooling in support of information modeling and federation.
The issued RFP is available on the OMG wiki, here: http://tinyurl.com/SIMFrfp
Now the real work begins! Those interested in submitting or supporting a submission should start considering how to be involved. I have some thoughts on this as follows:
The process going forward is to produce initial submissions to SIMF which are due August 13, 2012, submitters must submit an “LOI” by March 15, 2012. Multiple submissions and submission teams are to be expected to respond to such a RFP. These are to allow the initial submitters to express their approach consistently and precisely, there are then frequently attempts to merge these initial approaches for final submissions – however competing submissions may also come to vote in the OMG. Another approach is that there is one unified submission team that integrates the approaches of all on the team to produce the initial submission.
As we know that there are a few different approaches to conceptual modeling and federation it is my view that we should NOT try and have a single submission team, it would be better for multiple teams to form and come out with clean approaches which we can then evaluate. However, it would be good for the “team of teams” to be in contact and for those interested to let their approach be known to provide for a way to find like minds that can come together to form teams. For now we can continue to use the simf-rfp@xxxxxxx mailing list and wiki at http://tinyurl.com/SIMFrfp for this, but may consider other resources as appropriate. I suggest those interested in participating let their interest be known on the list. Please let me know if you require access to the SIMF mail list or wiki.
I am really looking forward to SIMF and working together to help solve the data problem.
Regards,
Cory Casanave