The Industrial Data Space Information Model

The Information Model is an RDFS/OWL-ontology covering the fundamental concepts of the Industrial Data Space, i.e. the types of digital contents that are exchanged by participants by means of the Industrial Data Space infrastructure components. The model development is led by Fraunhofer FIT and IAIS with support by members of the International Data Spaces Association in context of the Information Model sub-working group (SWG4). The group is chaired by Christoph Lange (Fraunhofer FIT) and Sebastian Tramp (eccenca GmbH).

The model development is based on GitHub, following a defined branching model. Contributions and community feedback are maintained via the GitHub ticketing system. The release process is aligned with the International Data Spaces Association architecture working group meetings, i.e. there are roughly 2 releases scheduled per year with intermediary updates to the development branch. The currently stable version is 2.0.0. The Information Model and associated resources published on Github are available under the Apache License 2.0.

Authors and contributors

The Information Model was originally created by Jaroslav Pullmann, Fraunhofer FIT, Dr. Christian Mader, Fraunhofer IAIS and Dr. Sebastian Tramp, eccenca GmbH with significant contributions, comments and support by (in alphabetical order):

• Haydar Akyürek, Fraunhofer FIT
• Sebastian Bader, Fraunhofer IAIS
• Matthias Böckmann, Fraunhofer IAIS
• Dr. Sandra Geisler, Fraunhofer FIT
• Dr. Anna Kasprzik, TIB
• Andreas W. Müller, Schaeffler
• Dr. Michael Theß, Signal Cruncher GmbH

Likewise the authors would like to thank numerous colleagues at Fraunhofer, active participants of the International Data Spaces Association, the members of the W3C Dataset Exchange Group and Data Market Austria for illuminating conversations and support in shaping the Information Model.

Directory layout

There are following top-level files and directories:

• codes: Code lists of enumerated literal values and unique, singleton concept instances. Code lists are the preferred way to encode and reference re-usable instances of a homogeneous value range.
• docs: Documentation of the latest release of the Information Model and its classes.
• examples: Example instances providing a guidance on recommended model usage and best practices.
• images: Figures supporting the understanding and documentation of the Information Model
• metamodel: Utility models related to annotation and processing of model concepts.
• model: Core model split into sub-model directories each serving a particular modeling aspect.
• references: Versioned sources of relevant 3rd party models used as a reference (informative or effective, i.e. via concept import)
• taxonomies: Hierarchical arrangement of concepts (classes) extending a base concept defined by the core model.
• testing: Test resources (e.g. RDFUnit) used by tools and the build process to ensure the syntactic validity and semantic consistence of the Information Model
• utils : Utility scripts used for Information Model development and testing
• views: Individual tailored views defined upon the overall model for a particular purpose, e.g. the selection of Glossary terms
• Ontology.ttl: Detailed metadata of the Industrial Data Space Information Model.

Related resources

Additional resources are provided:

• Java representation of the Information Model, a mapping to a POJO domain model with no reference to graph or ontology constructs. Instances of the Information Model might such conveniently by created, validated and (de)serialized in a strongly-typed way using any common development environment without requiring in-depth knowledge of RDF and related Semantic Web standards. The Java Information Model is provided as a single JAR library via the Maven Repository operated by Fraunhofer IAIS:

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>snapshots</id>
        <name>maven-snapshots</name>
        <url>https://maven.iais.fraunhofer.de/artifactory/eis-ids-public</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

The dependency to the Java representation is as follows (replace ${infomodel.version} with the latest version):

<dependency>
    <groupId>de.fraunhofer.iais.eis.ids.infomodel</groupId>
    <artifactId>java</artifactId>
    <version>${infomodel.version}</version>
</dependency>

For automated validation of the Information Model POJOs (via the builder classes) you can include:

<dependency>
    <groupId>de.fraunhofer.iais.eis.ids.infomodel</groupId>
    <artifactId>validation-serialization-provider</artifactId>
    <version>${infomodel.version}</version>
</dependency>

• UML-based visualization of the Information Model, its classes, properties and relations, including their cardinalities. It is available as part of the Nightly and Release Packages on GitHub.

For members of the International Data Spaces Association only:

• Working document, explaining the usage of the Information Model for data exchanges in the IDS.