SOyA
Semantic Overlay Architecture

Semantic Overlay Architecture (short: SOyA) is a data model authoring and publishing platform and also provides functionalities for validation and transformation.

Problem Statement

Today’s data exists in a plethora of encodings and formats. At the same time established workflows require these data structures and switchin to new patterns is hard and error prone. However, in different contexts (e.g., regional, industrie-specific, legal) exactly the same datasets need specifc handling. Moreover, the same subject is sometimes spread over different data sources and connecting those is cumbersome.

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) was originally designed as a metadata data model to address some of the problems but is considered by some as heavyweight and available tools are not in much use.