Dear IPMC members, We are looking for a Champion and Mentors for the new SST incubator project proposal; see below. So far I contacted Justin Mclean and Christofer Dutz and they are considering to become mentors.
Best Regards Lothar === Abstract === SST (Semantic STEP Technology) is an optimized RDF/OWL API with GIT like revision control capabilities as an enabler for a new comprehensive CAD/CAx data model derived from ISO 10303 (STEP) and ISO 15926 (Oil & Gas) standards. === Rationale: The Problem to solve === There are many different kinds of Computer-aided technology (CAx) systems around. Some are listed here: => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided_technologies For all organizations that are involved in the design, production, maintenance and commercial use of industrial products a smooth exchange of data between these tools would be needed. Also please have in mind that for most industrial production a big supply network has be coordinated; each with it’s own specific tools. The reality is that data exchange between these system is often not possible and if available the interface tools are incomplete as they exchange only some, but not all needed data. The problem get even worse as often the systems have to be used in a cyclic iterative way to deal with design changes. The truth is also that for all CAx systems a big part of the software development power (if not the biggest part) is spent on the interfaces to other system, not on the core functionality the system provides. STEP is a big attempt to address this issue. In the introduction of ISO 10303-1:1994 "Overview and fundamental principles" and extended in the 2021 edition we can read: "ISO 10303 is an International Standard for the computer-interpretable representation of product information and for the exchange of product data. The objective is to provide a neutral mechanism capable of describing products throughout their life cycle. This mechanism is suitable not only for neutral file exchange, but also as a basis for implementing and sharing product databases, and as a basis for archiving. The information generated about a product during its design, manufacture, use, maintenance, and disposal is used for many purposes. The use can involve many computer systems, including some that can be located in different organizations. In order to support such uses, organizations need to be able to represent their product information in a common computer-interpretable form that is required to remain complete and consistent when exchanged among different computer systems." => https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:10303:-1:ed-2:v1:en In the introduction of ISO 15926-1:2004 "Overview and fundamental principles" we can see slightly different but highly overlapping goals: => https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:15926:-1:ed-1:v1:en The goals of the ISO 10303 and 15926 series of standards are only very partially achieved in practice today. The aim of the SST project is to make the visions of these standards a reality by providing an open source environment that is suitable to directly operate on distributed data on servers managed by different organizations. === Background === ISO 10303 and ISO 15926 and other series of standards are developed by the ISO Technical Committee 184: Automation Systems and Integration, Subcommittee 4: Industrial data. In its resolution number 9 from March 1985 the overall goal was expressed as: "To develop as soon as possible a single international standard for the exchange of product definition data to be called the standard for the exchange of product model data (STEP)." It took almost 10 years (1994/95) till the publication of the first set of standards. The geometric data models and assembly structures developed back then are today widely implemented by CAD and other systems. Since then the STEP standard grew constantly with lots of new application areas and layers of abstraction; but with only a few of the new capabilities really implemented and widely used. For upward compatibility reasons the originals data models where kept in place with only minor extensions. In parallel to the development of STEP, the process industry was searching for ways to capture the life-cycle data for their process plants. As ISO 10303 misses to capture the things around us in a clear and precise way they developed the ISO 15926 series of standards that are based on a 4D data model, allowing to fully capture things in time and space. The generic data model in part 2 was released in 2003, and now there is part 12 with a mapping to OWL: ISO/TS 15926-12:2018 Industrial automation systems and integration — Integration of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and gas production facilities — Part 12: Life-cycle integration ontology represented in Web Ontology Language (OWL) There had been a number of attempts to implement ISO 10303 and ISO 15926 on the basis of OWL/RDF technologies; but they all have in common that their performance is relatively low. This is on one hand caused by the way on how the data models are mapped to OWL, but are also caused by APIs such as Jena that are not optimized for this kind of data. === Proposal === The Semantic STEP Technology (SST) establishes a novel way to operate with industrial product data as it is needed in CAD/CAM/CAx systems, part libraries, product live cycle system and similar product management systems. SST focuses to record and integrate all aspects of particular products such as machines, vehicles, buildings, electronics, piece parts in all their life cycle faces (e.g. requirements, design, manufacturing and planning, usage, maintenance, dismantling). Data is recorded and integrated in a computer sensible way so that computer systems can process the data and make decisions on what to do without direct human intervention. SST has a small memory footprint, allows fast traversing of application data in any direction and is implemented in the GO programming language. SST is optimized for web services and cloud computing, but is also suitable for traditional single user applications. The SST data models directly support data models that are defined in the ISO 10303 series of standards. ISO 10303 is widely known as STEP which stands for "STandard for the Exchange of Product model data". Unfortunately there are some disadvantages with STEP; primarily week semantic definitions, several modelling layers that are more or less replicating the lower layers in some modified way and widely overlapping Application Protocols (AP); resulting in a standard that is much more complex than it needs to be. To address the issue with week semantic definitions in STEP, the SST data model is founded on the 4D data model of ISO 15926, the standard for "Integration of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and gas production facilities". The 4D data model is a superior model to support all disciplines, supply chain company types and life cycle stages, regarding information about functional requirements, physical solutions, types of objects and individual objects as well as activities. However ISO 15926 misses the design specific aspects that STEP is focusing on to a big degree. A disadvantages of ISO 15926 is that it fully relies on class membership to state that several objects share common characteristics. This results in wide use of 2nd and 3rd degree higher level classes (named such as class_of_class_of_xxx) that are quite hard to follow and that are not very suitable for practical data exchange. SST replaces most of these higher level classes and relationships by modelling most application objects as individuals, including designs. Instead of using class membership, SST is using the "isDefinedBy" relationship to state that e.g. a physical individual is defined by a design individual (knowing that there are always some smaller or bigger deviations). For the implementation basis SST relies on the Semantic Web standards from W3C such as RDF RDFS and OWL. Basis is the mapping provided in part 12 of ISO 15926, "Life-cycle integration ontology represented in Web Ontology Language (OWL)". SST is using this mapping, but is adding additional constraints to support efficient implementations. So not every RDF data set is suitable to be managed by SST. The main constraints are: * every subject of a triple must have a base URI that is the same as the NamedGraph it is used in * splitting of data into NamedGraph for each application object that can be managed independently (e.g. a part of a part library, an organization, an assembly design) * NamedGraph have to import import other NamedGraphs for needed application objects by owl:imports (e.g. an assembly design imports parts) * NamedGraph are stored internally in a binary normalized (canonical) format that is optimized for very fast loading, saving, diff and merge operations * application data uses for the base URIs random UUID-URNs and also random UUIDs for the fragments * extensive use of punning, even for application data => https://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-new-features/#F12:_Punning * revision control is realized for Namespaces (a collection of NamedGraph), very similar to GIT * replication of Namespaces and history to other servers realized very similar to GIT === Initial Goals or the Mission === To turn SST into an Apache top level project, the following features should be implemented for a 1.0 release: * Data Model adoptions to OWL and integration in SST-dictionary for early binding: -- ISO 15926-12 -- STEP integrated resources for representation (part43), geometry & topology (part 42) and more -- core parts of the STEP AP242ed2 DO-model -- ISO 80000 Quantities and units -- formal SST schema with full constraints (similar to the capabilities Express but for OWL) * Internal data storage in binary form: -- NamedGraph -- Diff between two NamedGraph -- Complete/partial history of a NamedGraph (including several NamedGraphs and Diffs sections) -- Complete stage (all NamedGraph together) * CRUD API: -- late binding (references to resources are not checked) -- early binding (references to resources are checked through compiled dictionary) -- undo / redo since last commit * GIT like functionality: -- user identification, authorization, authentication; -- storage of Commit (user, timestamp, comment, Namespace with all involved NamedGraphs); -- storage of versions of NamedGraphs and Diffs under their checksum (SHA1 or SHA256); -- replication of Namespaces with history to other repositories (via packed file); -- delta update to/from remote repository * Tools: -- compiler to convert schema level ontologies into early binding applications -- schema level validation; e.g. using SHACL -- generic filtering and extraction, e.g. using SPARQL -- filling NoSQL DB with derived information for general searching * Import & Export: -- Turtle (*.ttl) files -- STEP part 21 files along AP242 (MIM level) for geometric models and assemblies -- STEP AP242 XML files for certain application areas * Applications: -- generic web-based viewer and editor to SST data -- generic STEP viewer for parts, assembly structures -- 3D viewer of already tessellated data === Current Status === After many years of working in this field and trying out new approaches, the real implementation of this proposal in the GO programming language started from scratch in January 2021 by a core team of two persons. For end of June 2021 a full functional prototype is available consisting of the: * core API in late and early binding with complete CRUD functionality * binary RDF file handling for NamedGraphs and Diffs * import & export of Turtle files (*.ttl) * STEP AP242 XML import * a generic Web-Viewer onto the data * and more is available These capabilities are sufficient to start with the implementation of first SST applications. Next major things to implement are generic query capabilities (SPARQL), testing for schema level conformance (e.g. SHACL), GIT like functionalities for merging and replication, NoSQL DB adoption for querying derived information. ** Meritocracy ** So far the SST project grew up in the non public by two persons; each having a different focus. It is clear that this phase is ending when SST is turned into an Apache incubator project. There are many potential SST extensions and application areas inside and outside of the ASF that can only be managed by a real community. ** Community ** In the early days of STEP many universities, research institutes and CAD related companies where involved in the development and implementation of the STEP standard. This is partly documented in the book "The Grand Experience" from Sharon J. Kemmerer, NIST, 1999. But as the implementations got more mature, the strong growth in complexity of the standard and the endless time needed to get consensus and run through the standardization process, the number of participants got smaller and smaller. Today, as most of the original planned capabilities had been finally standardized, and there is a new way to implement STEP using RDF/OWL on the basis of a major parts of ISO/TS 15926-12, there is a good chance that a new community will come together; especially as today the integration of all these data on the Internet is so much demanded. There are already several communities around for which SST may play a role, e.g.: * MBx / CAx-IF implementor forum => https://www.cax-if.org/index.php * LOTAR, Long Term Archiving and Retrieval => https://lotar-international.org/ * POSC Caesar Association => https://www.posccaesar.org/ ** Core Developers ** The core developers are Vaidas Nargelas for the central GO code and Lothar Klein for the STEP data model and converter. ** Alignment ** Other than standard GO libraries, SST is not really dependent on other packages. However SST requires a second NoSQL DB with derived information for which one of the Apache projects might be used (maybe Apache Solr). Also it is clear that SST cloud applications (e.g. micro services) will require several of the capabilities provided by Apache. For some potential SST applications a linkage via Apache PLC4X might be used to directly drive production lines or a single NC machine from data stored in SST. ** Known Risk ** Failure to set up a developer community ** Project Name ** We think that "Semantic STEP" is an appropriate naming of the project as it clearly links with the W3C "Semantic Web" standards and is clearly indicating the application area "STEP". Within the code we widely use the prefix to indicate the GO packages: * sst for the core API * ssowl for the OWL ontology * sslci for the adopted life-cycle ontology from ISO 15926 * ssont for the adopted STEP ontology * ssrep for the adopted STEP representation models (e.g. geometry & topology) * etc. There are no trademarks on "Semantic STEP", however there are several trademarks for "SST". But as these letters are so generic there should be no conflict when using "Apache SST". Also there are several web-domains registered such as: * semantic-step.net and semanticstep.net * semantic-step.org and semanticstep.org The sponsoring entity is ready to transfer these domains to ASF is this proposal is accepted ** Orphaned products ** Both, Lothar Klein (Germany) and Vaidas Nargelas (Lithuania) have a long term commitment to make SST a success. ** Inexperience with Open Source ** Back in 2013 the committers have already released JSDAI under the AGPL v3 license (see www.jsdai.net). "J" stands for Java and "SDAI" stands for the "Standard Data Access Interface"; primarily an API according to: ISO/TS 10303-27:2000 Industrial automation systems and integration — Product data representation and exchange — Part 27: Implementation methods: Java TM programming language binding to the standard data access interface with Internet/Intranet extensions => https://sourceforge.net/projects/jsdai/ => https://jsdai.net/ ** Length of Incubation ** maybe 6 to 12 month till the point that an initial community has formed and a first release with all core components is available. ** Homogenous Developers ** The two initial founders of SST have quite different focuses and experiences. It is clear that during the incubation time the focus must be to build up a community. As the proposers have various contacts to universities and industry around the world this should be feasible over some time. However there is the chicken-egg problem. So first SST needs to become an official Apache incubator project to make people interested and ensure them that this is real opens software with an open community. ** Reliance on Salaried Developers ** So far the SST development is sponsored by LKSoftWare GmbH and the expectations is that this continues. ** Relationship with Other Apache Products ** Currently there are no dependencies on other ASF projects but Apache Solr and Apache Cassandra are being considered. ** A Excessive Fascination with the Apache Brand ** So far SST was developed without considering to make it an ASF project. Weighting the pros and cons we come to the conclusion that as an ASF project SST has a much bigger chance to make it a success; especially because only in this case we can hope that SST is widely used to publish industrial product data in a computer sensible way on the Internet. ** Documentation ** Not ready today. More detailed SST documentation will become available when in incubator stage. ** Initial Source ** All source files (GO, Turtle) are currently stored in an internal GIT of LKSoftWare GmbH. Source and Intellectual Property Submission Plan All is currently under copyright of LKSoftWare GmbH. Will be moved over to ASF when this podling application is successful. ** External Dependencies ** No ** Cryptography ** There is no cryptography involved in the core code-base. === Required Resources === ** Mailing lists: ** Needed lists are private@..., dev@..., commits@... ** Subversion Directory ** No ** Git Repositories ** Yes ** Issue Tracking ** JIRA ** Other Resources ** A Wiki for the documentation ** Initial Committers ** Vaidas Nargelas <vaidas.narge...@gmail.com> Lothar Klein <lothar.kl...@lksoft.com> === Sponsors === ** Champion: ** TBD ** Nominated Mentors: ** TBD ** Sponsoring Entity: ** TBD --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
