Event Contact: gpdis@elysiuminc.com, Danielle Williams (danielle.williams at elysiuminc dot com)
Event Reports:
Open Services Attendees: Bill Chown, Mark Schulte
General Observations: OSLC was one of the key technologies discussed during the Model-Based Systems Engineering workshop and throughout many of the presentations this week
What was learned and observed in the OSLC activities:
The four hottest topics covered at the workshop and throughout the conference included Modelica, SysML, OSLC and FMI. There was a brief conversation about whether as a standard, when should we use SysML vs. OSLC which demonstrated an alarming disconnect. This was clarified by the end of the workshop. The initial MBSE workshop was very well attended, to the surprise of the organizers who had only about 50% RSVP. I bet there were 100 people or so in the Model Based Systems Engineering workshop where OSLC was one of the technologies prominently highlighted. OSLC featured prominently in the discussions, and was one of the selected topics to further discuss in a subsequent round table session the next day.
From a Social Media perspective, the content was light. Some tweets from @TheoremSolution, @PTC, @Geometric_Ltd
We are still learning about this event and the genesis of it because it is a little different than other conferences. On the plus side, OSLC was discussed in the context of the Systems Engineering Track quite significantly and this is probably where the real traction was as the other tracks tended to be very IT centric.
Apparently, this event started as a way to work on connection problems between PLM vendors a few years ago and was initially Boeing only. Now it includes a few OEMs in Parker, Northrup Grumman, Boeing and Elysium. There are vendors there and others like Rockwell Collins, and this year Airbus was there. Airbus is being invited to be a bigger player next year and so they are slowly growing in the number of companies involved but you do have to be ‘invited’ to attend or help organize as they grow it over time. Hence, why we had difficulties when we initially approached them as OASIS out of the blue and wanted to participate/sponsor uninvited.
I think we got a lot of traction out of it this year. Only the first two days consisted of completely open sessions. The other days were all essentially closed, meaning that Boeing, Northrup, Parker and the other participants continued to host sessions and discussions but each session was closed to only the employees of each respective company in their own hosted sessions. While valuable, a lot of the vendors and other attendees necessarily leave at that point and the value of cross-pollinating OSLC ideas through a large diverse population recedes.
Despite that, this event was very effective in getting to talk to people who are focused on interoperability, albeit largely biased by historical methods and the long shadow of traditional PLM.
Brief Synopsis of the MBSE Workshop: The discussions centered around how to evaluate a data interoperability ecosystem and what are the industry data standards for system design, modeling and data exchange that are the most relevant. How can we improve the communications between OEM, supplier and vendor? With respect to OSLC, the presenters introduced linked data principles, REST and role of RDF. From a linked data users perspective, SysML concepts can be used to define cross domain relationships. The extension of OSLC resource shapes by others like the OSLC4MBSE group was discussed briefly. FORD talked about the goals and solutions needed around data exchange standards. To provide traceability (establish dependencies), to help manage change across disparate models, to help make program decisions based on information which exists in multiple sources, and to facilitate the exchange of data between systems. In this context, OSLC was considered a viable option for a lightweight, “web of data” approach when migration of data was unnecessary or not desired. It was pointed out that most other standards people look toward today DO involve the moving of data. (transformations, import/export (e.g. via XML), etc.). Adding consistency checking to your environment was a concern that was mentioned.
So we support a continuing participation from OSLC, but maybe the most effective way to do so would be to push forward more papers reflecting growing usage and experience with OSLC in real use cases (as they develop), and in the “trade show” aspects of it promote a common image/logo/identifier of OSLC at each participating vendor or user (although thinking about it there were not many!), rather than having expenditure as we did this time. However, that expenditure is something we should review at the next meeting, and see what we felt was our ROI.
Gave bright orange luggage tags. They were not obviously luggage tags. Bill Chown has the remaining 50 or so and the extra flyers too, and will take them all to the STEP-OSLC event in Stuttgart, where I’m sure we will find a way to hand them out!
