REMINDER: caBIG™ Review Requested for Draft Compatibility Guidelines v3.0

The draft caBIG™ Compatibility Guidelines v3.0 document is now available for review and comment by the caBIG™ Community.

The updated draft version of the Compatibility Guidelines v3.0 can be found at: https://gforge.nci.nih.gov/frs/download.php/2638/20071024_caBIGCompatGuideRev3_DRAFT_v5.pdf

The purpose of the caBIG™ Compatibility Guidelines is to provide the caBIG community with procedures for creating and adopting software systems that are syntactically and semantically interoperable. This is a living document that will evolve to incorporate emerging standards and requirements for interoperability that are being identified by the caBIG™ community within the broader context of national and international standards development efforts.

The Compatibility Guidelines represent a synthesis of several sources of thought, experience, tools, and practice in the areas of information systems development, adoption of existing data standards, development of data standards when needed, and interoperability. These sources include: Cross-cutting and Domain Workspaces from caBIG™; Model-Driven Architecture from the Object Management Group (OMG); the ISO/IEC 11179 standard for metadata registries; Health Level Seven Version 3 (HL7); Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC); Open Grid Forum (OGF); Semantic Web from W3C; Web Service Resource Framework and Security Standards from Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS); and caCORE from the NCI.

Numerous activities over the past 2.5 years are reflected in these updated Compatibility Guidelines. These activities include:

The release of the caGrid 1.0 and 1.1 Infrastructure
The experience of the caGrid 1.0 reference implementation projects
The experience of early adopters of caGrid 1.0
The work done on UML model harmonization
The work done on vocabulary standards
The work done on CDE re-use

The release of the Compatibility Guidelines v3.0 primarily focuses on the expansion of the Gold Compatibility requirements for the 4 compatibility criteria:

1.  Programming and Messaging Interfaces: Achieving gold level maturity focuses the broader silver level messaging requirements to create a unified service-oriented data and analytical grid.

2.  Vocabularies/Terminologies & Ontologies: The gold level of maturity for an application or information resource is similar to the silver level, but with the added requirements that registered standards approved for caBIG™-wide usage are implemented wherever they are available and that the vocabulary is accessible through a standard caGrid Vocabulary API.

3.  Data Elements: Gold level requirements for data elements are an extension of the silver level specification, with added requirements for usage of appropriate CDEs that have been approved as standards for caBIG-wide usage.

4.   Information Models: Gold level maturity for Information Models will involve an added degree of harmonization across caBIG domains.

The Architecture & VCDE Workspaces have also taken this opportunity to clarify the silver level requirements for the 4 compatibility criteria as well.

The updated draft version of the Compatibility Guidelines v3.0 can be found at: https://gforge.nci.nih.gov/frs/download.php/2638/20071024_caBIGCompatGuideRev3_DRAFT_v5.pdf

Additional background material is also available including:

Comments received from Crosscutting Workspace participants on the v3.0 document and the Working Group's responses to those comments:
https://gforge.nci.nih.gov/frs/download.php/2515/20071012_XCWS_Comments_v6.xls

A presentation outlining the changes between the Compatibility Guidelines v2.0 and v3.0: https://gforge.nci.nih.gov/plugins/scmcvs/cvsweb.php/~checkout~/gold/presentations/20070808_Day3_Compatibility_Guidelines/20070808_Day3_Compatibility_Guidelines_API.ppt?rev=1.6;content-type=application%2Foctet-stream;cvsroot=gold

We now request that the caBIG™ community and other interested stakeholders review the draft version of the Compatibility Guidelines v3.0 and provide input into this document.

Please send any questions or comments to Michael Keller (keller_michael@bah.com), by 5:00pm Eastern Time on Wednesday, December 5, 2007. The Working Group responsible for generating this updated version of the Guidelines will compile all comments received and update the Guidelines where appropriate.