Purpose-Aware Interoperability: The ONISTT Ontologies and Analyzer

Universal substantive interoperability among an arbitrary collection of heterogeneous live, virtual, constructive (LVC) systems for an arbitrary purpose is not attainable. The Open Netcentric Interoperability Standards for Training and Testing (ONISTT) project has applied and extended the Department of Defense Netcentric Data Strategy and semantic web concepts to the more limited but attainable objective of “purpose-aware” interoperability. The core of the ONISTT approach for purpose-aware interoperability comprises (1) a formal description of exercise needs and confederation resources, captured in domain-specific ontologies expressed via the Web Ontology Language; and (2) an Analyzer written in XSB Prolog that applies general logical reasoning and domain-specific rules to determine whether a candidate confederation can satisfy the requirements of a proposed exercise. In the ONISTT knowledge capture phase, knowledge bases (KBs) are constructed by populating the ontologies with instance data. In the Analyzer employment phase, an exercise planner identifies the specific exercise tasks and primary training audience, and may assign specific resources (both operational and LVC systems) to roles derived from the exercise tasks. For each required interaction between two roles, the Analyzer assesses whether the capabilities provided by the assigned resources are likely to provide a satisfactory level of substantive interoperability. The Analyzer also discovers and ranks potential resources for unassigned roles. The exercise planner may adjust assignments in response to Analyzer warnings about failed or degraded interoperability. The Analyzer can also generate configuration artifacts (to be used for exercise setup). This paper explains the ONISTT approach and benefits. It also describes the January 2007 demonstration of a working prototype in which the Analyzer used information from approximately 40 KBs to assess interoperability in several demonstration cases, including two task scenarios: Movement to Contact and Joint Close Air Support. ONISTT is sponsored by the Office of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Readiness. The observations expressed in this paper are derived from the ONISTT effort, but are solely the views of the SRI International authors.