Business Semantics Management (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 between the underlying data structures.
Accordingly, BSM is established by two complementary 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 communicate with each other via 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 that is validated in European projects, government and industry.
Business semantics 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 UML, Object role modeling, XML, etc. 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”. In the construction of information systems, semantics have always been crucial.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. According do Dave McComb, “The scale and scope of our systems and the amount of information we now have to deal with are straining that model.”
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.
Application
The available business semantics can be leveraged in the so-called business/social layer of the organization. They can for example be easily coupled to a content management application to provide the business with a consistent business vocabulary or enable better navigation or classifi cation of information, leveraged by enterprise search engines, leveraged 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. Business semantics provide a kind of abstracted, federated, and virtualized way to access and deliver data in a more efficient and aligned manner. In that respect, it is similar to 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.
Collibra is the first organization to commercialize the idea behind business semantics management. Collibra's approach to Business Semantics Management is based on DOGMA, a research project at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
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