Semantic model

From Katrina Help Info

What is a semantic model?

Tim BLee (http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/RDF-XML.html)

The semantic model provides a layer of abstraction, allowing users to work at a higher level with underlying information and logic, and (if well done) resolves ambiguities. It can be layered and extended to create powerful, highly intuitive representations of the business. This enables an entire enterprise to be described within a common framework, and once defined, can be widely re-used and re-configured to create new capabilities.

Components include: Customer (Portfolio/Roles), Operations, Security. Semantic models are used to describe a "supply chain“, i.e. all of the activities involved in satisfying an end-user demand for a product. And because the semantic model works at the level of business meaning instead of the underlying physical databases, messaging queues, and application APIs, business scenarios can be easily created and managed by business users without requiring scarce IT resources. Another term for semantic model is "ontology” (a data model that represents a domain and is used to reason about the objects in that domain and the relations between them): the set of classes, relationships, and functions in a universe of discourse. A semantic model is expressed in a language, such as XML.

A Semantic model expresses meaning using a (reference) language such as xml and attempts to define data based on a "users" perspective - e.g. is it a loan when applied for? during the spproval process? or when approved?

A decent 'semantic model' could help to coordinate the usage of metadata, tags, schemas, rdf, etc. in a cohesive sense.