Fusionsoft Semantic Integration Platform Overview

Brief conceptual description of the platform for IT architects.

This overview is for IT architects who need to know main principles of the platform. It briefly outlines the platform in the whole, introduces main concepts. For less abstract discussion see other sources, for instance, "Use Cases".

The main purpose of the platform is to provide the single semantic integration layer over a group of information systems and enable application-domain-oriented and user-friendly development of GUI over the layer. Below we consider the main principles of the platform from three points of view: end users', developers', and data providers'. But first of all, we define what the platform's semantic nature lies in.

Semantic Nature
Semantic nature of the platform is very simple and shows up in using application domain concepts when interacting with it. The abstraction "concept" takes the central place in the platform. The concept here is very close to the common meaning of the word. Any abstraction imaginable can be presented as a concept. A concept itself has only some unique name and nothing else. All other concept properties show up in their interrelations.

The platform provides the single set of concepts representing the integration basis. The concept set is used in the platform as follows. On the one hand, systems being integrated provide mapping of their data to the concepts. On the other hand, users of the platform handle concepts when interacting with it.

End User's View
From users' point of view the semantic layer is a set of interrelated concepts. Using the platform, one can explore the concepts understanding their interrelations, request data uncovering concept relation contents, or formulate queries. Users do not have to reflect on origin of data or their format. They only perceive them as interrelated instances of concepts.

The platform provides a query language transparent for end users, for example, the query (Project-Task-Person) selects for every project all people involved in. An intuitively obvious query builder could be used instead of writing queries by hand. Mainly end users developing forms are supposed to formulate queries. All other users could exploit the prepared forms with no idea about underlying queries. Some analysts could still explore data directly using the query builder, but this activity tends to form creation eventually.

Mainly GUI of the platform represents a united space of loosely coupled forms. Loose coupling here means that a form developer, considering here as an end user too, does not need anything to know about other forms created. Form navigation ways are automatically determined by the platform considering information displayed on every form. So a developer publishes a form with no explicit definition of relations with other forms. All the relations are derived from the concept layer and form themselves. For example, if a form showing tasks of a project contains a concept "Person" in one of its tables, one can navigate from the form to all other forms giving detailed information on people. We call it semantic navigation.

The form space can be extended dynamically with no influence on other published forms. Newly published forms become accessible for all users of the platform since publishing, except if access rules say the opposite.

The platform has many built-in features facilitating form development and use like data filtration, master-detail dependencies, drill-down and others. All the functionality is declarative and end-user-friendly. For instance, to define that two data grids are master-detail-dependant, one should only draw a line between them. It is the platform that is responsible for understanding how the master-detail dependence should be created and adjusted.

The drill-down feature is a part of semantic navigation process. Before navigating, one could select some data they are interested in drilling down. When navigating, the target form is not merely opened, but it filters undesirable information out keeping only that concerning the selected data.

Combining all the facilities, the platform allows for end users to handle information semantics itself rather that data structures and access ways.

Developer's View
The process of form creation is end-user-friendly and so it is described in "End User's View". The main concern of developers is extension of the platform's functionality with additional components. From this point of view, the platform is a set of components which could be used for form construction and data access. To be embeddable to the platform, new components should provide some interfaces (services) prescribed. Within the platform, components could be dynamically published in a special component store and automatically downloadable from there by any users.

Data Provider's View
Data providers are responsible for mapping source data to the semantic layer. For relational databases the platform proposes a tool automating the mapping process. One should only define for every table attribute a concept it corresponds to, and then concept interrelations will be extracted automatically from the relational schema.