The International Data Spaces (IDS) Information Model

The Information Model is an RDFS/OWL-ontology covering the fundamental concepts of the International Data Spaces (IDS), i.e. the types of digital contents that are exchanged by participants by means of the IDS infrastructure components. The ontology and its documentation are published at https://w3id.org/idsa/core. The model development is led by the Fraunhofer Institutes for Applied Information Technology FIT and Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS with support by members of the International Data Spaces Association in the context of the Information Model sub-working group (SWG4). The group is chaired by Christoph Lange (Fraunhofer FIT) and Sebastian Tramp (eccenca GmbH).

The model development is based on GitHub, following a defined branching model. Contributions and community feedback are maintained via the GitHub ticketing system. The release process is aligned with the International Data Spaces Association architecture working group meetings, i.e. there are roughly 2 releases scheduled per year with intermediary updates to the development branch. The current release version is 4.1.0, with the latest revision 4.1.0. The Information Model and associated resources published on GitHub are available under the Apache License 2.0.

Authors and contributors

The Information Model was originally created by

• Jaroslav Pullmann, Fraunhofer FIT now with Stardog Union – succeeded by Dr. Christoph Lange (current co-chair of the information model sub-working group)
• Dr. Christian Mader, Fraunhofer IAIS and
• Dr. Sebastian Tramp, eccenca GmbH (current co-chair of the information model sub-working group)

with significant contributions, comments and support by (in alphabetical order):

• Haydar Akyürek, Fraunhofer FIT
• Sebastian Bader, Fraunhofer IAIS
• Matthias Böckmann, Fraunhofer IAIS
• Dr. Sandra Geisler, Fraunhofer FIT
• Dr. Anna Kasprzik, TIB
• Dr. Christoph Lange, Fraunhofer FIT (see above)
• Jörg Langkau, nicos AG
• Johannes Lipp, Fraunhofer FIT
• Lina Molinas Comet, Fraunhofer FIT
• Andreas W. Müller, Schaeffler
• Dr. Michael Theß, Signal Cruncher GmbH

Likewise, the authors would like to thank numerous colleagues at Fraunhofer, active participants of the International Data Spaces Association, the members of the W3C Dataset Exchange Group and Data Market Austria for illuminating conversations and support in shaping the Information Model.

Directory layout

There are following top-level files and directories:

• codes: Code lists of enumerated literal values and unique, singleton concept instances. Code lists are the preferred way to encode and reference re-usable instances of a homogeneous value range.
• docs: Documentation of the latest release of the Information Model and its classes.
• examples: Example instances providing a guidance on recommended model usage and best practices.
• images: Figures supporting the understanding and documentation of the Information Model
• metamodel: Utility models related to annotation and processing of model concepts.
• model: Core model split into sub-model directories each serving a particular modeling aspect.
• references: Versioned sources of relevant 3rd party models used as a reference (informative or effective, i.e. via concept import)
• taxonomies: Hierarchical arrangement of concepts (classes) extending a base concept defined by the core model.
• testing: Test resources (e.g. RDFUnit) used by tools and the build process to ensure the syntactic validity and semantic consistence of the Information Model
• utils : Utility scripts used for Information Model development and testing
• views: Individual tailored views defined upon the overall model for a particular purpose, e.g. the selection of Glossary terms
• Ontology.ttl: Top-level metadata of the Information Model.

Related resources

Additional resources are provided:

• Latest information about IDS and all related resources: The IDS-G

• Releases are provided in this GitHub repository

• Overview on IDS Messages, descriptions and attribute explanations: Message Overview

• Java representation of the Information Model, a mapping to a POJO domain model with no reference to graph or ontology constructs. Instances of the Information Model might such conveniently by created, validated and (de)serialized in a strongly-typed way using any common development environment without requiring in-depth knowledge of RDF and related Semantic Web standards. The Java Information Model is provided as a single JAR library via the Maven Repository operated by Fraunhofer IAIS; cf. the documentation:

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>snapshots</id>
        <name>maven-snapshots</name>
        <url>https://maven.iais.fraunhofer.de/artifactory/eis-ids-public</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

The dependency to the Java representation is as follows (replace ${infomodel.version} with the latest version):

<dependency>
    <groupId>de.fraunhofer.iais.eis.ids.infomodel</groupId>
    <artifactId>java</artifactId>
    <version>${infomodel.version}</version>
</dependency>

For automated validation of the Information Model POJOs (via the builder classes) you can include:

<dependency>
    <groupId>de.fraunhofer.iais.eis.ids.infomodel</groupId>
    <artifactId>validation-serialization-provider</artifactId>
    <version>${infomodel.version}</version>
</dependency>

• UML-based visualization of the Information Model, its classes, properties and relations, including their cardinalities. It is available as part of the Nightly and Release Packages on GitHub.

• A high-level conceptual specification is given as a part of the IDS Reference Architecture Model (current version 3.0 of 2019; see section 3.4).

• Webinars

  • IDSA Tech Talk of September 2020, giving a high-level intro to version 4.0: slides, video
  • Webinar of November 2018, giving a technical overview of the Information Model

For members of the International Data Spaces Association only:

• Working document, explaining the usage of the Information Model for data exchanges in the IDS.