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A Semantic Transformation Approach for ISO 15926

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DOI: 10.1007/11908883_34 · Source: DBLP

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 A Semantic Transformation Approach for ISO 15926

Sari Hakkarainen1, Lillian Hella1, Darijus Strasunskas1 and Stine Tuxen2

1
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU),
NO-7491, Trondheim, Norway
{sari, hella, dstrasun}@idi.ntnu.no
2
Bekk Consulting AS,
NO-0150 Oslo, Norway
stine.tuxen@bekk.no

Abstract. Traditional industries anticipate supporting cross-organizational co-

operation as applied in the semantic Web and Web services environments.
However, the international standards used in organisations are often developed
prior to or independent from the novel technologies. We demonstrate a solution,
namely to perform controlled semantic transformations enabling both technolo-
gies. A study in the semantic relationship between an international standard,
ISO 15926 Part 2, and a semantic Web technology, OWL DL is reported. Three
alternative semantic transformation approaches are identified where two are
elaborated further. Accordingly, two Transformation Protocols are developed in
order to transform ISO 15926 components to OWL. Further, two Inverse Trans-
formation Protocols are developed. The transformations are analysed and the al-
ternative transformation protocols are evaluated

1 Introduction

There is a need for efficient sharing and usage of information. Large traditional indus-
tries, such as oil industry are dependent on internationally agreed standards to main-
tain a semantically equal understanding of shared domains in and across organiza-
tions. However, the international standards currently used are often developed prior to
or independent from the novel technologies. One possible solution is to develop a
language that is powerful enough to express and differentiate the technological ele-
ments as well as the underlying semantics. A further requirement here is that the lan-
guage must be computer and human readable. An initiative to translate the interna-
tional standard ISO 15926 to the semantic Web technology OWL has been taken by
the Norwegian Oil Industry 1 . Here we study and demonstrate an alternative solution,
namely to facilitate controlled semantic transformations for models enabling co-
existence of both technologies. The semantic relationship between the ISO 15926 Part
2 and OWL DL is studied in particular. The objective is to study the semantic rela-
tionship between ISO 15926 and OWL in order to facilitate in- and cross-
organizational co-operation as applied in the semantic Web and Web Service envi-
ronments.

1 Integrated Operations at OLF – Norwegian Oil Industry Association, http://www.olf.no

2 Hakkarainen et al.

Two alternative transformation protocols are defined. Further, in order to examine

possible loss of semantics during the transformation two inverse transformation pro-
tocols are defined. The transformations and the inverse transformations are analysed
and the alternative transformation protocols are evaluated comparatively by their
semantic performance.
The outline is as follows. In section 2, the studied representations and related work
are described and the prerequisites presented. In section 3, transformation and inverse
transformation protocols are defined. In section 4, the alternative protocols are ana-
lysed and the ability to preserve semantics is compared between the approaches. Fi-
nally, in section 5, conclusions and directions for future work are discussed.

2 Describing the Semantics

The diversity and multitude of resources and applications in organizations and the
Internet places elaborated requirements on methods and tools for efficient generation,
manipulation and compositional usage of information and services. OWL and ISO
15926 that are in the foci of this study are representing the novel models for reasoning
about and for specifying information systems, respectively.

2.1 ISO 15926

The purpose of the international standard for Industrial automation and integration –
Integration of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and gas production facili-
ties (ISO 15926) is to facilitate integration of data to support the life-cycle activities
and processes of process plants. It has defined syntax and graphical representation yet
not formal semantics. It is built on EXPRESS (ISO 10303-11) to specify its data
model yet facilitates more accurate distributed specification.
ISO 15926 consists of seven parts as follows. 1 - Overview and fundamental prin-
ciples; 2 - Data model; 3 - Methodology for the development and maintenance of
reference data libraries; 4 - Reference data; 5 - Procedures for registration and main-
tenance of reference data; 6 - Scope and methodology for developing additional refer-
ence data; 7 - Implementation methods for data exchange and integration.
ISO 15926 Part 2 [9] specifies a data model that semi-formally defines the mean-
ing of the life-cycle information in a single context supporting the views that process
engineers, equipment engineers, operators, maintenance engineers and other special-
ists may have on the plant [8]. Table 1 summarizes the main components.

Table 1. Components of ISO 15926 Part 2

ISO 15926 Comment
Main components
Entity data type The standard consists of 201 Entity data types, the top level Entity data type is
thing, with its subtypes possible_individual and abstract_object. All other
entities are subtypes of these.
Attribute Each Entity data type can have Attributes that are specified in the Attribute
definition part of the description of an Entity data type.
 A Semantic Transformation Approach for ISO 15926 3

Entity data type restriction

Subtype Subtype is specified before “is a” in the textual description of an Entity data
type. All the Entity data types are part of a Subtype-Supertype hierarchy.
Supertype Supertype is specified after the “is a” in the textual description of an Entity
data type. All the Entity data types are part of a Subtype-Supertype hierarchy.
One-of Entity data types can be mutually exclusive, and this is specified in the textual
description of an Entity data type.
Transitivity An Entity data type can be defined as transitive, referred to as Transitivity.
Attribute restrictions
Attribute-belongs-to An Attribute can not exist independently from an Entity data type. The Entity
data type that defines an Attribute within an Attribute definition is specified
through Attribute-belongs-to.
Attribute-relates-to An Attribute can relate an Entity data type to either another Entity data type or
Simple Type. The related Entity data type or Simple Type is specified through
Attribute-relates-to.
Redeclared Attribute- An Attribute-relates-to is re-declared when it relates to a different Entity data
relates-to type than its Supertype Entity data type does, i.e. Redeclared Attribute-relates-
to.
Simple types
STRING STRING is a Simple Type, defined in ISO 10303-11:1994
INTEGER INTEGER is a Simple Type, defined in ISO 10303-11:1994
REAL REAL is a Simple Type, defined in ISO 10303-11:1994
LOGICAL LOGICAL is a Simple Type, defined in ISO 10303-11:1994
BOOLEAN BOOLEAN is a Simple Type, defined in ISO 10303-11:1994
BINARY BINARY is a Simple Type, defined in ISO 10303-11:1994

2.2 Prerequisite for the analysis

Semantic Web technologies allow the definition of logical relationships against which
reasoning can occur, something EXPRESS does not fully support. EXPRESS does not
formally distinguish between attributes and relationships [12], a feature that is often
required. Hence, a transformation from ISO 15926 to an ontology language is antici-
pated to facilitate reasoning.
OWL was chosen as an ontology language for transformation being a recommen-
dation by W3C showing its relative maturity level and suitability for Web applica-
tions. Furthermore, OWL version of ISO 19526 is recommended by [12] since OWL
offers the capability to better connect with models of individuals and ontologies. It
also offers potential for enhanced distribution of the models through namespace refer-
encing. However, transformation form ISO 15926 to OWL requires a semantic trans-
formation protocol that is controlled and based on semantics.

2.3 Related work

The long-term objective for the work is to establish a semantic relationship between
ISO 15926 and OWL in order to facilitate in- and cross-organizational co-operation in
traditional domains as applied in the novel semantic Web and Web Service environ-
ments. The semantic gap between ISO 15926 and OWL is seemingly narrow when
considering the object model part of the languages.
The models in the traditional modelling standards such as ISO 15926 have been
used for human interpretation with graphic representation and semi-structured docu-
4 Hakkarainen et al.

mentation. The emerging semantic Web recommendations such as OWL are primarily
intended for machine interpretation, enabled utilizing the high expressiveness of the
syntax when modelling. Thus, the target models should contain more semantics than
can be captured in a pure syntactic transformation process and further, a simple 1:1
mapping between language constructs introduce non-intended semantics to the target
model. This problem has not been recognized in the current body of related work.
The Integrated Information Platform (IIP) project [10] extend and formalize ISO
15926 using OWL. OWL Full is chosen for maximum expressiveness in the resulting
representation [3]. The POSC Caesar 2 Intelligent Data Sheet (IDS) project defines
product models for data sheets based on ISO 15926 Part 4. A resulting Reference
Data Library (RDL) 3 is planned to consist of approx. 100,000 EXPRESS standard
classes, be defined in ISO 15926 Part 4, and mapped to Part 7 OWL format.
Further, there are efforts to formalize and ontologize other international standards.
[4] for instance, have taken an approach to ontologize Electronic Data Interchange
(EDI), i.e. to model meaning of the messages and create semantically enabled mes-
sages yet maintaining backward compatibility to traditional systems. [6] specifies an
OWL ontology to cover the Geographic Information – Metadata (ISO 19115) stan-
dard, simply expressing each ISO 19115 as a single OWL construct. These concurrent
approaches seek to define a new language in OWL and assume a 1:1 relationship
between the languages not considering the problem of general modelling purpose and
style.
In order to capture as much of the semantics in the source models as possible, we
use production rules that operate on syntactic markers in the model and produce target
syntax that not always correspond to the source syntax, but try better to transmit its
semantics. In a real world application, we picture the process to be semi-automated,
where the user has the possibility to add semantics that was not in the original model
but is considered its intention. Syntactic markers for such intention may be found e.g.
in natural language (NL) comments and other documentation. NL requires a user to
interpret it, but in the future, an automated NL process can be tailored for interpreta-
tion in individual domains and application areas. In this way, we expect more of the
intended semantics to be preserved, semi-automatically with low labour intensiveness.
A first step in the direction of achieving that long-term objective, namely a study
of possible approaches for transformation of ISO 19526 into OWL with high preser-
vation of human interpreted semantics is presented in the sequel.

3 Semantic Transformations

A method for transforming the basic components of ISO 15926 to their proper repre-
sentation as language constructs in OWL is required. [5] identifies three distinct ways
to perform the transformation, all of which have different interpretations and conse-
quences for the preservation of semantics in the resulting data models. Two of them
are described below, since the third requires access to domain models. Here, only the

2
http://www.posccaesar.com
3
http://www.infowebml.ws
 A Semantic Transformation Approach for ISO 15926 5

transformation and inverse transformation protocols resulting from respective meth-

ods are discussed, the algorithms for actually performing the transformations are
described in [5] in detail and the transformations are illustrated by examples.
A transformation protocol consists of a set of transformation rules that define a
mapping between a source and one or many target language constructs with an asso-
ciated transformation condition that defines complex rules, if any. In the transforma-
tion (and inverse) protocol tables below, the first columns specify the source and the
second specify the target. The last columns specify transformation conditions being
empty when a construct can be transformed unconditionally. Further, a source con-
struct is NOT MAPPED if no target construct to represent the source exists. A transfor-
mation is IMPLICIT if a source construct is indirectly transformed to a target construct
through transformation of other constructs.

3.1 Transformation and inverse using method TM1

Transformation method one (TM1) considers the semantic interpretation of the source
language construct when defining a transformation rule to a target construct. Basi-
cally, one ISO 15926 component corresponds to exactly one OWL primitive. The
assumption is that there exists a one-to-one relationship between the models. The
inverse transformation (ITP) using the TM1 method is based on the OWL constructs
that the transformation protocol TM1-TP resulted in, i.e. only the language constructs
occurring as target in TM1-TP are assigned transformation rules in TM1-ITP. The set of
possible target constructs in TM1-ITP is not restricted by the results of using TM1-TP.

Table 2. Transformation protocol TM1-TP

ISO 15926 OWL Transformation condition
Main components
Entity data type owl:Class
Attribute owl:DatatypeProperty IF Attribute relates Entity data type to a Simple Type
owl:ObjectProperty IF an Attribute relates an Entity data type to another
Entity data type AND NOT already translated
IMPLICIT IF already translated
Entity data type restriction
Subtype rdfs:subClassOf
Supertype NOT MAPPED
One-of owl:disjointWith
Transitivity owl:TransitivePropertyc
Functional owl:FunctionalPropertyd
Attribute restrictions
Attribute-belongs-to rdfs:domain
Attribute-relates-to rdfs:range IF NOT already translated
IMPLICIT IF already translated
Redeclared Attrib- owl:allValuesFrom
ute-relates-to
Simple types
STRING xsd:string
INTEGER xsd:integer
REAL xsd:float
LOGICAL xsd:boolean
BOOLEAN xsd:boolean
6 Hakkarainen et al.

ISO 15926 OWL Transformation condition

BINARY xsd:integer

Table 3. Inverse Transformation protocol TM1-ITP

OWL ISO 15926 Transformation condition
owl:Class Entity data typea
rdfs:subClassOf Subtype
owl:disjointWith One-of
owl:ObjectProperty Attribute
owl:DatatypeProperty Attribute
owl:TransitiveProperty Transivityb
owl:FunctionalProperty Functionalb
owl:allValuesFrom Redeclared Attribute
rdfs:domain Attribute-belongs-to
rdfs:range Attribute-relates-to
xsd:string STRING IF xsd:string is used in conjunction with
owl:DatatypeProperty
xsd:integer INTEGER
xsd:float REAL
xsd:boolean BOOLEAN

3.2 Transformation and inverse using method TM2

Transformation method two (TM2) considers extended semantic interpretation of the

source language construct when defining a transformation rule to a target construct.
Basically, one ISO 15926 component potentially correspond to several OWL primi-
tives and vice versa. The assumption is that there exists a many-to-many relationship
between the models. The inverse transformation using the TM2 method is based on the
OWL constructs that the transformation protocol TM2-TP resulted in, i.e. only the
language constructs occurring as target in TM2-TP are assigned transformation rules in
TM2-ITP. The set of possible target constructs in TM2-ITP is not restricted by the re-
sults of using TM2-TP.

Table 4. Transformation protocol TM2-TP

ISO 15926 OWL Transformation condition
Main components
Entity data type owl:Classa IF NOT relationship AND NOT Subtype of relation-
ship AND NOT EXPRESS_string AND NOT
EXPRESS_integer AND NOT EXPRESS _real AND
NOT EXPRESS_logical AND NOT
EXPRESS_boolean AND NOT EXPRESS_binary
owl:ObjectProperty IF relationship OR Subtype of relationship
owl:DatatypeProperty IF EXPRESS_string OR EXPRESS_integer OR
EXPRESS _real OR EXPRESS_logical OR
EXPRESS_boolean OR EXPRESS_binary
Attribute owl:DatatypeProperty IF Attribute-relates-to a Simple type AND NOT
Attribute-belongs-to relationship AND NOT Attribute-
belongs-to a Subtype of relationship AND NOT
Attribute content
 A Semantic Transformation Approach for ISO 15926 7

ISO 15926 OWL Transformation condition

owl:ObjectProperty IF Attribute-relates-to an Entity data type AND NOT
Attribute-belongs-to relationship AND NOT Attribute-
belongs-to a Subtype of relationship AND NOT
Attribute content
IMPLICIT IF Attribute-relates-to relationship OR Attribute-
belongs-to a Subtype of relationship or already trans-
lated OR Attribute content
Entity data type restriction
Subtype rdfs:subClassOf IF NOT Entity data type relationship AND NOT
Subtype of Entity data type relationship
owl:subPropertyOf IF Entity data type relationship OR Subtype of Entity
data type relationship
Supertype NOT MAPPED
One-of owl:disjointWith IF NOT relationship AND NOT relationship Subtype
NOT MAPPED IF relationship OR Subtype of relationship
Transitivity owl:TransitiveProperty
Functional owl:FunctionalProperty
Attribute restrictions
Attribute-belongs-to rdfs:domain IF NOT relationship AND NOT Subtype of relation-
ship AND NOT Attribute content
IMPLICIT IF NOT relationship OR Subtype of relationship OR
Attribute content
Attribute-relates-to rdfs:rangeb IF NOT relationship AND NOT Subtype of relation-
ship AND NOT already translated
rdfs:rangeb IF (relationship OR Subtype of relationship) AND it is
the second Attribute AND NOT already translated
rdfs:domainb IF (relationship OR Subtype of relationship) AND it is
the first Attribute AND NOT Attribute-relates-to a
Subtype of relationship AND NOT already translated
rdfs:domainb IF (relationship OR Subtype of relationship) AND the
first Attribute AND Attribute-relates-to relationship
AND Attribute-relates-to a Subtype of relationship
AND NOT already translated
Redeclared Attrib- owl:allValuesFrom IF NOT Attribute-belongs-to relationship AND NOT
ute-relates-to Attribute-belongs-to a Subtype of relationship
rdfs:range IF (Attribute-belongs-to relationship OR Attribute-
belongs-to a Subtype of relationship) AND it is the
second Attribute
rdfs:domain IF (Attribute-belongs-to relationship OR Attribute-
belongs-to a Subtype of relationship) AND it is the
first Attribute
Simple types
STRING xsd:string
INTEGER xsd:integer IF NOT Entity data type represen-
tion_of_Gregorian_date_and_UTC_time
xsd:gYear IF Attribute year belonging to Entity data type repre-
sentation_of_Gregorian_date_ and_UTC_time
xsd:gMonth IF Attribute month belonging to Entity data type
representation_of_Gregorian_date_and _UTC_time
xsd:gDay IF Attribute day belonging to Entity data type repre-
sentation_of_Gregorian_date_ and_UTC_time
xsd:time IF Attribute hour belonging to Entity data type repre-
sentation_of_Gregorian_date_and_UTC_time AND
Attribute second NOT already translated AND Attrib-
ute minute NOT already translated THEN Attributes
second, minute and hour are translated
8 Hakkarainen et al.

ISO 15926 OWL Transformation condition

xsd:time IF Attribute minute belonging to Entity data type
representation_of_Gregorian_date_and_UTC_time
AND Attribute second NOT already translated AND
Attribute hour NOT already translated THEN Attribut-
es second, minute and hour are translated
REAL xsd:float IF NOT Entity data type representa-
tion_of_Gregorian_date_and_UTC_time
xsd:time IF Attribute second belonging to Entity data type
representation_of_Gregorian_date_and_UTC_time
AND Attribute minute has not been translated AND
Attribute hour has not been translated THEN Attribute
second, minute and hour are translated
LOGICAL xsd:boolean
BOOLEAN xsd:boolean
BINARY xsd:integer

Table 5. Inverse Transformation protocol TM2-ITP

OWL ISO 15926 Transformation condition
owl:Class Entity data typea
owl:ObjectProperty Entity data type IF relationship OR subPropertyOf relationship
Attribute IF NOT relationship AND NOT subPropertyOf
relationship
owl:DatatypeProperty Entity data type IF EXPRESS_string OR EXPRESS_integer OR
EXPRESS_real OR EXPRESS_logical OR
EXPRESS_boolean OR EXPRESS_binary
Attribute IF NOT EXPRESS_string AND NOT
EXPRESS_integer AND NOT EXPRESS_real
AND NOT EXPRESS_logical AND NOT
EXPRESS_boolean AND NOT
EXPRESS_binary
rdfs:subClassOf Subtype
owl:subPropertyOf Subtype
owl:disjointWith One-of
owl:TransitiveProperty Transivityb
owl:FunctionalProperty Functionalb
owl:allValuesFrom Redeclared Attribute
rdfs:domain Attribute-belongs-to IF NOT used in conjunction with
owl:ObjectProperty relationship AND NOT
used in conjunction with subPropertyOf
owl:ObjectProperty relationship
Attribute-relates-to IF used with owl:ObjectProperty relationship
OR used in conjunction with a subPropertyOf
owl:ObjectProperty
rdfs:range Attribute-relates-to
xsd:string STRING IF xsd:string is used in conjunction with
owl:DatatypeProperty
xsd:integer INTEGER
xsd:float REAL
xsd:boolean BOOLEAN
xsd:gYear/gMonth/gDay INTEGER
xsd:time INTEGER IF hour specified by hh OR minute specified
by mm
REAL IF second specified by s.sss
 A Semantic Transformation Approach for ISO 15926 9

3.2 Assumptions underlying the transformation protocols

The transformation protocols above are defined using two transformation methods
based on semantic and extended semantic interpretation. Accordingly, there is a need
to report the underlying assumptions made for the actual interpretations in this study.
A trial transformation was performed in order to assure the quality of the proposed
transformation protocols. Some basic assumptions underlying the transformation rules
of the above TM1-ITP, TM1-ITP, TM2-TP and TM2-ITP are described in the sequel.
Thing. Every individual in OWL is a member of the class owl:Thing. Thus each user-
defined class is implicitly a subclass of owl:Thing [11]. Similarly, ISO 15926 consists
of 201 hierarchically ordered Entity data types, with thing on top. Thing has six
Attributes. The transformation protocols TM1-TP and TM2-TP map these Attributes to
owl:ObjectProperty or owl:DatatypeProperty. Note that OWL does not allow relating
properties to owl:Thing. Thus, Entity data type thing is mapped to owl:Class thing
which is a subclass of owl:Thing. Further, an Attribute is mapped to
owl:ObjectProperty or owl:DatatypeProperty with the associated Attribute-belongs-to
thing mapped to rdfs:domain thing. These mappings preserve the one-to-one mapping
of the TM1 method.
Identical name for Entity data type and Attribute. Some of the ISO 15926 Attributes
are given lexically identical names to some ISO 15926 Entity data types. OWL does not
allow identical names for owl:Class, owl:ObjectProperty and owl:DatatypeProperty.
In the transformation algorithms in [5] this conflict is simply resolved by starting an
owl:Class with a capital letter, whereas starting owl:ObjectProperty and
owl:DatatypeProperty instantiations with a lower case letter.
Multi-use of properties. Some ISO 15926 Attributes are used in conjunction with
several ISO 15926 Entity data types as Attribute-relates-to with Attribute. A multi-use of
properties arises. OWL does not allow creating owl:ObjectProperty with identical
names. While resolving this conflict the reasoning capabilities of OWL should be as
defined for OWL DL, whereas the semantics in ISO 15926 should be preserved. Thus
the transformation conditions in TM1-TP and TM2-TP above assert that such an Attribute
or Attribute-relates-to is not directly mapped if a respective Entity data type or Attribute
with identical name is already transformed. Note that lexically identical Attributes are
used in conjunction with lexically identical Attribute-relates-to. In [5] the specific
conditions are exemplified for each of the multi-used properties.
An alternative resolution is to rename the lexically identical Attributes in order to
translate each Attribute independently. This strategy is used once where TM1-TP re-
names the Attribute content that is an Entity data type subtype. The exception was neces-
sary since Attribute-relates-to used in conjunction with Attribute content relates to differ-
ent Simple Types for each Entity data type.
Redeclared Attribute-relates-to. An attribute of an Entity data type may be redeclared
for a Subtype of that Entity data type. Here the Attribute-relates-to is a different Entity data
type than its Supertype Entity data type. The term Redeclared Attribute-relates-to is used to
denotate these components.
TM1-TP maps Redeclared Attribute-relates-to to owl:allValuesFrom, while TM2-TP
maps it to either owl:allValuesFrom, rdfs:domain or rdfs:range. The inverse trans-
10 Hakkarainen et al.

formation protocols TM1-ITP and TM2-ITP map owl:allValuesFrom to Attribute-relates-

to. Further, TM2-ITP assures that the Redeclared Attribute-relates-to that in TM2-TP is
mapped to rdfs:domain or rdfs:range is inverse mapped to Attribute-relates-to. Thus,
much of the semantics is preserved. However, Redeclared Attribute-relates-to will no
longer be explicitly defined. Instead an Attribute of an Entity data type, and not only a
redeclared one, is defined in the Entity data type. Thus, by comparing an Entity data type
with its Subtype it is possible to infer whether Attribute-relates-to is redeclared for the
Attributes belonging to its Subtypes.

INTEGER and BINARY. TM1-TP maps both ISO 15926 INTEGER and BINARY to
OWL xsd:integer. In the inverse TM1-ITP xsd:integer is mapped to INTEGER. As a
consequence, the declarative semantics of BINARY is lost and the number of instances
of INTEGER is increased after an inverse transformation.
An alternative strategy would be to map the ISO 15926 Simple type BOOLEAN to
xsd:boolean, xsd:hexBinary or xsd:integer. However, xsd:boolean restricts the binary
values to 1 or 0 whereas binary may be any combinations of 1 and 0’s, and further,
xsd:hexBinary represents the binary digits as hexadecimal digits. The loss of seman-
tics occurs even here; TM1-TP maps ISO 15926 BINARY to xsd:integer.
BOOLEAN and LOGICAL. Both ISO 15926 BOOLEAN and LOGICAL are translated to
OWL xsd:boolean. The inverse maps xsd:boolean to BOOLEAN. Thus, the declarative
semantics of LOGICAL is lost and the number of instances of BOOLEAN is increased.

Fig. 1. Summarizing overview of TM1-TP and TM1-ITP

 A Semantic Transformation Approach for ISO 15926 11

4 Semantic Analysis of Transformation Methods

4.1 Preserved and altered semantics using TM1

TM1 is summarized in Fig.1. 16 ISO 15926 components are mapped to 14 OWL lan-
guage constructs. The overall mapping is straightforward. The detected deviations are
described below.
IMPLICITLY translated components. Both Attribute and Attribute-relates-to may be
implicitly defined (see Fig.1). Some Entity data types have Attributes with identical
names. If the Attribute is already translated we claim that the other Attributes with
identical names are implicitly translated through the first Attribute. Further, Attribute-
relates-to and Attribute-belongs-to are used in conjunction with the Attribute. If the
Attribute is implicitly defined then Attribute-relates-to is also implicitly defined..

NOT MAPPED components. ISO 15926 component Supertype is not mapped in the
transformation. ISO 15926 Subtype is translated to rdfs:subClassOf thus automated
reasoning is still possible and the semantics is preserved even though Supertype is not
mapped.

4.2 Preserved and altered semantics using TM2

TM2 is summarized in Fig.2. According to TM2-TP, ISO 15926 Entity data type is trans-
lated to either an owl:Class, an owl:ObjectProperty or an owl:DatatypeProperty.
IMPLICITLY translated components. Both Attribute and Attribute-relates-to may be
implicitly defined (see Fig. 2). If it is Attribute content defined inside Entity data type
EXPRESS_string, EXPRESS_integer, EXPRESS_real, EXPRESS_logical, EXPRESS_boolean
or EXPRESS_binary it is implicitly defined since these Entity data types are translated to
owl:DatatypeProperties that relates to the same Simple Type as Attribute content. Even
though the semantics of Attribute content are lost, it is of no relevance since it is only
used as an intermediary between the Entity data type and the associated Simple Type,
while TM2-TP use the Entity data type itself as the intermediary. This rule does only
apply when the Attribute belongs to an Entity data type relationship or a Subtype of
relationship. Thus, it is a consequence of translating the Entity data type to an
owl:ObjectProperty.
When an Entity data type is translated to owl:Class, and its Attributes are translated to
owl:ObjectProperties, the owl:Properties are defined independent of the owl:Class.
Thus rdfs:domain is used to specify the class that the ObjectProperty belongs to.
However, when an Entity data type is translated to owl:ObjectProperty, for example
Entity data type classification, its Attributes are not translated, but the value they relate to
is specified by rdfs:domain and rdfs:range. Since rdfs:domain and rdfs:range are
used inside owl:ObjectProperty it is not necessary to explicitly define the property
they belong to.
NOT MAPPED components. ISO 15926 Subtype is translated to rdfs:subClassOf thus
automated reasoning is still possible and the semantics is preserved even though
Supertype is not directly mapped. When an Entity data type is translated to
12 Hakkarainen et al.

owl:ObjectProperty it is no longer possible to define mutually exclusiveness, since

OWL does not provide a mechanism for expressing mutually exclusive properties.
Hence, the semantics are lost when an ISO 15926 One-of is used in conjunction with
an Entity data type translated to owl:Property.

Fig. 2. Summarizing overview of TM2-TP and TM2-ITP

4.3 Comparative analysis of TM1 and TM2

The major difference between TM1-TP and TM2-TP is that TM1-TP only considers the
semantics interpretation of the ISO 15926 components, while TM2-TP also considers
the semantics of each instance of the components. Consequently a difference is made
in the transformation of the ISO 15926 components.
Using TM1-TP, an Entity data type is translated to an owl:Class. Translation of the
201 Entity data types resulted in 201 owl:Class constructs. The resulting OWL code is
presented in [5]. In TM2-TP an Entity data type is translated to either owl:Class,
owl:ObjectProperty or owl:DatatypeProperty. Translation of the 201 Entity data types
resulted in 144 owl:Class, 51 owl:ObjectProperty and 6 owl:DataProperty [5].
Relationship. Entity data type relationship and Subtypes of relationship are translated to
owl:Class according to TM1-TP and owl:ObjectProperty according to TM2-TP. When
the inverse translations are performed the names of the Attribute is preserved by using
TM1-ITP. By using TM2-ITP the Attributes are created, but a new name has to be de-
fined as the original names are not used.
 A Semantic Transformation Approach for ISO 15926 13

By translating Entity data type classification to owl:ObjectProperty classification

TM2-TP takes advantage of the reasoning capabilities offered by OWL. However, in
addition to loss of Attribute name, semantics concerning the direction of the relation-
ship are lost. TM1-TP uses the owl:Class Classification as an intervening class between
owl:ObjectProperty classified and owl:ObjectProperty classifier. That is, the proper-
ties are connected through classification which provides the direction of the proper-
ties. The direction of the relationship is limited in TM2-TP, as illustrated with the one-
directional arrow between rdfs:domain Thing and rdfs:range Class. It is possible to
extend the Protocol by creating owl:InverseProperty that define the inverse relation-
ship.
Attribute. ISO 15926 Entity data type EXPRESS_string, EXPRESS_integer,
EXPRESS_real, EXPRESS_logical, EXPRESS_boolean and EXPRESS_binary are
translated to owl:Class according to TM1-TP while they are translated to
owl:DatatypeProperty according to TM2-TP. The Attribute content is defined within
each Entity data type. However, Attribute-relates_to associated with each Attribute relates
to different Simple Type components. Thus when the Attributes are translated using TM1-
TP it is not possible to take advantage of the OWL feature that allows multiple
domains to be defined for an Attribute. As described in section 3.1 TM1-TP renames the
Attributes when they are translated to owl:DatatypeProperty.
TM2-TP translates the Entity data types to owl:DatatypeProperty. Thus the Attribute
content is lost in the translation. However, the loss of semantics is of no relevance as
the Attribute is an intermediary between the Entity data type and the associated Simple
Type, while TM2-TP use the Entity data type itself as the intermediary.

The Simple Types. Both TM1-TP and TM2-TP define six Simple Types. While TM1-TP
translates these components into four OWL language constructs, they are translated
into eight language constructs using TM2-TP. The difference is the translation of the
Simple Types used in conjunction with Attribute-relates-to of the Attributes defined within
Entity data type representation_of_Gregorian_date_and_UTC_time. Compared to TM1-
TP, TM2-TP in a larger extent takes advantage of the language constructs in OWL.
However, TM1-TP is preferred if it is necessary to keep hour, minute and second as
separate values.

5 Concluding Remarks

Two views for transforming ISO 15926 into OWL are analysed. The first alternative
considers the semantic interpretation of the ISO 15926 components straightforward.
The second alternative considers extended semantic interpretation, i.e., it also consid-
ers the semantics of each instance of the components. A third alternative that is based
on contextual semantic interpretation on a domain model was identified in addition
yet not further elaborated. The alternative views were tested through definition of
alternative transformation protocols with corresponding inverse transformation proto-
cols and analysed according to their ability to preserve semantics.
The analysis shows that Transformation Method one (TM1) results in a seemingly
direct representation of ISO 15926 in OWL, and enables full specifications, whereas
 14 Hakkarainen et al.

Transformation Method two (TM2) takes more advantage of the language constructs
in OWL. The requirements one places at the resulting OWL representation are deci-
sive for selection of a transformation method and for assessing the appropriateness of
the proposed transformation protocols. TM1 is most appropriate if the goal is to
achieve a representation of ISO 15926 in OWL where the quantity of Entity data
types is equal to the number of the corresponding OWL language construct, i.e. where
a one-to-one mapping is desired. TM2 is most appropriate if the transformation is
performed in order to take advantage of the reasoning facilitates provided by OWL,
thus adding functionality not natively present in ISO 15926.
As not having access to complete domain models in ISO 15926, the transformation
method three (TM3) fell out of scope for this study. However, the method should be
tried out with both semantic and extended semantic transformation method in the
future. TM3 is based on the contextual semantic interpretation on existing domain
models. A transformation to target language is based on mapping the components of
the domain model in source language to semantically equal language constructs in
target language. In this case not solely analytic, but empirical observations could be
made in conjunction with appropriate statistical analysis.

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