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- An Introduction to ISO 15926
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What is ISO 15926
- How Information Exchange is Supposed to Work
- How Information Exchange Actually Works
- How Information Exchange Works with ISO 15926
- How ISO 15926 Works
- A Bit of History
- Long Tail
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Areas of Current Work
- Norwegian Continental Shelf
- MIMOSA
- JORD
- iRING
- Development of Standards
- Educational Material
- Getting Started With ISO 15926
- Other ISO 15926 Resources
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Introduction to ''An Introduction to ISO 15926''
- ISO 15926 is Like a Babel Fish
- ISO 15926 is Like HTML
- ISO 15926 is Like English on Your Cell Phone
- About the Author
- ISO15926Primer_DiagnosticPage
We Need to Focus on Business Processes
Status of this document: Ready for Cold Eyes Review
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Contents
Abstract
The barrier to interoperability between software applications is not technology. The barrier is business processes. Instead of focusing on solving interoperabilty problems by automating existing manual processes, we should be focusing on understanding the information object.
Traditional Approach: Focus on Technology
Every organization today is under relentless pressure to reduce costs. One way to reduce costs is to increase productivity, and nowadays, this is usually accomplished by automating manual tasks by writing some computer application.
Fig 1 - Problem Space
Plant design nowadays involves work processes that (more-or-less) take information from one or more software applications, transform it somehow with a manual process, and enter the results into another application. These work processes may range from precise, documented procedures to heuristics and rules of thumb that "people are just supposed to know". In most organizations there are hundreds of them.
Example: Populate a PO Directly From 3D Model Database
There are several 3D plant modeling applications available commerically. There are also several purchasing applicataions available commercially. But none of the purchasing applications, out of the box, will populate a purchase order directly from any of the 3D modelling applications. But building purchase orders based on the contents of a 3D model is something every EPC has to do a great many times. In order to do this, every organization has had to develop work processes for selecting a range of objects from a 3D model, extracting a material report in some format, transforming the report into something the purchasing application can understand, then importing it to a purchasing application.
If this sort of thing has to be done often enough, there is an opportunity to increase productivity and reduce errors by automating it. Using today's technology there are a great many ways to do the automation:
- Commerical Middleware
- Custom programming (C, Java, Visual Basic, ...)
- Neutral file (Excel, Notepad)
- XML Neutral file
What is the Problem?
The problem here is similar to that of point-to-point mapping, of which we have written at length elsewhere in this Primer.
- The costs of setup and configuration
- Repeating costs for setup and configuration
- The cost of interpretation (because meaning is often inferred from the context)
- The complexity is exposed (you have to do it from scratch each time)
- The new global, distributed work execution model amplifies the problem
- Aging Workforce (these are the people who understand the context of legacy systems)
Alternative: Focus on Information Modeling
Fig 2 - A New Approach
The traditional approach is to automate an existing work process. The better way is to understand the information model and focus back on the business task we want to accomplish. In the purchasing order example above, the task is to get descriptions of certain components from a 3D model into a purchase order. If we solve the problem by precisely modeling the information we get from the 3D model in a way that preserves the meaning (i.e., the semantics) of the data values, we will be able to use the solution more than once. It will take longer to model the information in this way, but we will only have to do it once, even if the software vendor publishes a new version, or even if we want to use a different set of software on a new project.
Information Modeling
Admitedly, the statement "precisely modeling the information we get from the 3D model in a way that preserves the meaning of the data values" is not a trivial statement.
"It's easy for pigs to fly, all they have to do is learn how to grow wings."
When you get under the hood with information modeling, it starts to look like Artificial Intelligence. After all, we want a machine to be able to read any random data sheet and understand the context, the meaning, just as well as a human being.
Fortunatley, this pig can indeed learn how to grown wings.
ISO 15926 is a Robust Standard
If an organization wanted to model its information it would not have to use ISO 15926. For instance, it could create its own standard. But there are considerable advantages to using ISO 15926:
- It would not have to design the system of recording knowledge.
- It would not have to design every entity itself, it could use entities designed by others, using some objects verbatim if appropriate, or extending existing objects and only have to add the differences.
- Leverage the work of a great number of people, from many industries world wide.
- The resulting applications will interoperate with other ISO 15926-enabled applictions.
Information Modeling is not an exact science. The standardized methodology of ISO 15926 will ensure two information models, starting from different organizations, will still have a high probability of alignment. The templates and classes of ISO 15926 are public and extensible, with the extentions (optionally) being public as well.
The last section of this Primer, Getting Started with ISO 15926, will discuss some resorces for learning Information Modeling and strategies for getting involved in ISO 15926.
Next
There are a number of issues associated with the need for interoperability, or with current attempts at interoperability. This section shows how ISO 15926 will help.