A Common Data Model Beats a Tin Cup and String

As I was watching the webinar yesterday about our SID Model Browser, I found myself wondering how we got ourselves in the semantic quagmire we’re currently in in the first place. The telco SID (Shared Information/Data) model covers 8 domains and has 1,000 classes. There’s an awful lot of information being passed around there. We’ve come a long way from tin cups and string. Of course, it’s easy to see how semantic issues arise. I call it tin but someone in England probably calls it "al-you-min-ee-um," and we allegedly speak the same language! It would be no great surprise if a third party trying to communicate with both of us decided to go for "light weight alloy number 356."

A common data model is critical for any environment that uses multiple applications. And in the OSS/BSS arena in telco, there can be hundreds or thousands of applications trying to work together; often with limited success at the cost of unhappy customers. And even common models like the SID change over time so you need to be able to manage changes and do impact analysis. You need to work at it. But first you need to "see" and understand it - that makes the SID Model Browser kind of a cool tool. (If I do say so myself.)

SOA What? On the subject of a common model in SOA, David Linthicum of InfoWorld just blogged, "You need to face the data first and define a common data or abstraction layer so that the services are not bound to a particular schema, but enjoy the use of the data nonetheless." It beats a tin cup and string.

If you’re interested in replaying the archive of the introduction to the SID Model Browser, you can find it here.