This education unit launches a new course on the FIBO Data Model.
Building an Enterprise Model is a considerable challenge, irrespective of the notation, Entity-Relationship or Ontology Web Language, OWL.
The vision is to achieve an immediate return on investment by using the reference model as an encyclopedia of building blocks, leveraging design patterns as blueprints for Solution Architecture, and reaping benefits from day one.
Solution Architects’ way is to follow the data model packages rather than fully rationalizing the concept hierarchies. We start with the package structure, and installments describe individual FIB-DM packages.
Watch the video first because the narrative explains the charts and diagrams. You can view the PowerPoint and download a PDF here.
Transcript of the lecture
Hi, this is Jurgen with the second lesson in the FIB-DM education course.
Semantics for Project Architects is about understanding the business content and leveraging the design for solution architecture.
The FIBO and FIB-DM are the industry standard. The financial industry business ontology, the FIBO, is the blueprint for enterprise ontologies and the knowledge graph, and 3,500 users downloaded the ontology-derived Financial Industry Business Data Model already. The education course covers the model structure, concept hierarchies, and the transformation process.
The education course is for data architects, stakeholders, and ontologists. As a Project Data Architect, you know how to do data modeling, and you want to copy design patterns for your department or application database design. And as an enterprise data architect, you know, industry reference models, you want to customize the standard for your organization. And finally, as a finance/business user and management, as a stakeholder, you want an immediate return on investment. As an ontologist responsible for operational and enterprise ontology design. You want to understand the FIBO model.
Well, Monsters.
Many in the room, on the call, I think, came across multi-year, multi-million-dollar failures in creating an enterprise model.
Some comments on FIB-DM, called the 3,000-entity data model, the world’s largest, a monster. And that is a misconception of both the Financial Industry Business Data Model and Ontology.
Quite on the contrary, you can leverage the industry standard as a reference model, facilitating common names, definitions, design patterns, and reference data across the enterprise. You can scope the enterprise model up to an appropriate size, and you can use iterative development cycles like spiral or agile, harvesting tangible benefits for the project from day one.
So my argument is that an encyclopedia like the Britannica can’t be too big. I would rather have that than my first dictionary with the rocket balloon and ferry. The analogy is here: when in doubt, look it up in FIB-DM.
Now, however, it is a fair point. Irrespective of the notation, whether we look at an E/R model or Ontology Web Language, rationalizing the complete industry standard and customizing it for the financial institution is a Herculean labor, and I don’t recommend it.
So the vision is an immediate return on investment: using the reference model as an encyclopedia of building blocks, leveraging the design as blueprints for solution architecture, and, with that, we have ROI from day one. The way to success is a two-pronged learning approach. That’s a key tool for the industry standard. Enterprise architecture typically focuses on the 15 Concepts and Associative Hierarchies top-down to understand the model.
Whereas Solution Architecture looks at the FIB-DM packages, the FIBO modules for the project, like Loans or Securities, not the whole model.
It’s a business-driven education course. The enterprise architect rationalizes the model, traversing the 15 Concept hierarchies and Associative Entities. The project data modeler wants to copy blueprints and designs for specific business solutions. It’s looking at individual packages, here, like for mortgages, and then copying the design to create a smaller scope, a smaller model. So the project solution track teaches the business content in detail. We deep dive into packages relevant to your project.
We have an iterative development process, as in the Spiral Model or Agile Development. Determine the objective, analyze, develop, test, and plan the next iteration. As an example, we could start with core entities like the customer or borrower, and of course, the FI itself, then scope a particular package, like mortgages, and in the next iteration, add another package, like cards. So we have costs for the first iterations that are low and remain under control, and the deliverables provide the cumulative benefit.
All education units have Info Cards. It typically has a title on the front page, and then it tells what format the resource has. PowerPoint, video, or article. And here it has the audience, main and optional. In this case here a business or finance person.
The education path for project architects.
You should first study the semantics for finance users here. This is a deep dive, uh, critical class because it explains concepts, concept maps, and how to communicate design to users. And from there, you can move on to the Semantics for Midsize, Large, and very large banks, as appropriate for your institution. Then here for modelers, Semantics for Data Architects. Very important here is scoping a subset model from FIB-DM, and with that, using the Navigator to achieve a consistent scope faster.
And, um, finally, here are the articles, which provide more detail. You should read them. We can discuss them. Because they explain how and why the ontology-derived data model works. No. And for project architects, in particular, here is the article on the 15 Concepts. The introduction to FIB-DM and to understand how they relate to the ontology. Ontology versus data model hierarchies, and uh, object properties transformed to associative entities.
The resources and next steps. The FIB-DM website has the PowerPoints for viewing and PDFs for download. Has deep dive articles, scalable vector graphic diagrams of packages, and the subtype hierarchies. Well, everybody gets enough emails already, so I’m not emailing updates. All news updates are shared and announced on the FIB-DM LinkedIn page, and you can watch the education videos on YouTube. There is a course, uh, for FIB-DM. Yeah. Evaluate the open-source core model and upgrade to the latest 3,173 entity full version. Yeah, and you’re welcome to ask questions or schedule a meeting.
Thanks a lot.