linked data platform as a novel approach for enterprise application integration

Center for Open Middleware


Linked Data Platform as a novel approach for

Enterprise Application Integration

Nandana Mihindukulasooriya

Raúl García Castro

Miguel Esteban Gutiérrez

Asunción Gómez Pérez


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A real world integration use case

Same domain,similar concepts

Different schemas,

technologies, interfaces


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Different levels of EAI

• Physical Integration • Interconnection of devices via computer networks

• Application Integration • Application connectivity (interfaces) • Data integration

• Syntactic heterogeneity• Structural heterogeneity• Semantic heterogeneity

• Process Integration • Orchestration• Choreography


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Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)

• Businesses processes spread across • Multiple domains / aspects• Multiple organizations

• Application heterogeneity• Data model• Business logic and restrictions• Interfaces

• Integrated applications• Share data and processing among any connected applications in

the enterprise• Exchange business level information in formats and contexts that

each application understand


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ALM iStack Project

• Objective: •To evaluate and foster the adoption of Linked Data technologies as the means for facilitating real-time application integration in enterprise-grade environments.



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Linked Data for EAI

• What are the concrete benefits that Linked Data-based EAI brings when compared to the current approaches followed in industry?

• Is this approach mature and enterprise ready? If not, which are the gaps / challenges ?

• What are the lessons learned from the current projects using Linked Data for EAI?


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Why Linked Data ?

• Global identifiers that are dereferenceable for data• Easily accessible data using HTTP• Reconciliation of duplicate data• Avoid data silos

• Typed links between data from different sources • Ability to traverse through data to find more information and context

• Flexible graph based RDF data model • Easy to merge data from different sources • Multiple schemas can live together • Easy to evolve

• Richer knowledge representation and modelling• Mappings without complex transformations

• By adding more information rather than converting data

Not an exhaustive

list


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Linked Data• Use URIs as names for things• Use HTTP URIs so that people

can look up those names.• When someone looks up a URI,

provide useful information, using the standards (RDF*, SPARQL)

• Include links to other URIs. so that they can discover more things

REST• Resource identification• Uniform interfaces• Self-descriptive messages• Hypermedia as the engine of

application state (HATEOAS)• Stateless interactions


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Linked Data Platformhttp://www.w3.org/2012/ldp/

• RESTful protocol for Read / Write Linked Data• Extensions to HTTP protocol

• Pagination, ordering, partial updates, introspection, creation factories, collections

• Standardization Interoperability • Developed by W3C Linked Data Platform Working Group

• IBM, Oracle, Fujistu, Base22, OpenLink Software, UPM, University of Oxford, DERI …

• Progress• Currently addressing first round of public comments • Ready for the second public review soon

• Current and potential implementations • OpenLink Virtuoso, Eclipse Lyo, ALM iStack middleware, Apache

Marmotta (Incubating), Callimachus, Tabulator, rdflib.js, RWW.IO, …


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ALM Stack implementation

• A proof of concept implementation using W3C Linked Data Platform protocol for application integration

• Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) domain• Integrating tools used in software development process

• Uses extended version of OASIS Open Service Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) vocabularies

• Open Source under Apache License


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Architecture of the Proof-of-Concept


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Lessons learned

• Incremental adaption • Native LDP support Vs LDP adapters

• Publishing application data as Linked Data is not hard• Consuming link data is not as easy

• Coreferences, provenance, licensing, reliability, business logic integration

• A lot to learn from other areas• SOA, Web Services, Web Applications• Databases

• Challenging enterprise requirements• Security, RDF data validation, transactions, performance, etc.


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Security• Security requirements

• Authentication, Authorization, Accounting (AAA)• Integrity, Confidentiality • Privacy, licensing

• Can’t we just use what is used by current web apps ?• HTTP Basic Auth and Digest Access Auth• TLS / SSL• User-centric decentralized identity systems

• OpenID, BrowserID

• OAuth

• Can we do more with Linked Data ?• WebID• Web Access Control• S4AC, PPO, RelBAC, and AMO ontologies

• Future plans • W3C Web Access Control Working Group


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RDF Data Validation• Application needs to do input validations • Don’t we already have schema languages ?

• RDF Schema and OWL• Inferencing vs validation • Open World Assumption and Non-unique Name Assumption

• Current approaches• OWL with integrity constraints (Alternative semantics for OWL)• SPARQL and SPIN-based solutions• Resource Shapes• and a lot more

• https://www.w3.org/2012/12/rdf-val/agenda

• Future plans • W3C RDF Validation Working Group


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Transaction in LDP• Do we really need transactions ?

• Data consistency is vital for some applications

• What can we learn from databases and web apps ?• Distributed databases• ACID vs BASE

• Current approaches for RESTful applications • Transactions as resources (ROA)• Try-Cancel/Confirm pattern • Optimistic Concurrency control methods (with E-tags)• Lockable resources


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and more topics

• Vocabulary Management and Discovery• Resource Versioning• Provenance management • Introspection Mechanisms• Event Processing • Application models, design patterns, anti-patterns• Resource identity management (coreference & naming

governance) • Partial resource retrievals and queries • Performance and caching • Testing and monitoring


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Contact

• Questions, feedback, suggestions, collaborations …

Prof. Asunción Gómez Pé[email protected]

[email protected]



Fourth International Workshop on

Consuming Linked Data 2013 October 22nd, 2013

Nandana Mihindukulasooriya,

Raúl García Castro,

Miguel Esteban Gutiérrez,

Asunción Gómez Pérez

Thank you

linked data platform as a novel approach for enterprise application integration

Technology