VEC Model published as Web Ontology

🚀 Exciting News from the VEC Team! 🚀

We are thrilled to announce a significant enhancement in the publication of the Vehicle Electric Container (VEC) model! In addition to the traditional XML Schema format, from now on we are releasing the VEC model as an OWL 2 ontology and a corresponding SHACL Schema.

🔍 Why are we doing this?

Publishing VEC as an ontology creates new opportunities and offers several key advantages:

1. Semantic Interoperability: Unlike the XML Schema representation, which only defines syntax, an ontology defines both syntax and semantics. This ensures that different systems can interpret the data in a consistent and meaningful way, leading to better data integration and understanding. The VEC model and its documentation contain a wealth of semantic constraints and definitions that can not be expressed in a purely syntactical definition like XML Schema. By using ontologies, we want to achieve a significant reduction in the possibilities for dialects to emerge.
2. Data Integration and Linking: Ontologies and RDF facilitate the integration of data from diverse sources by providing a common framework for linking and merging of distributed data. We expect these to be key factors in solving current challenges such as incremental change data exchange, the support of distributed development systems or the creation of cross-domain digital threads.
3. Support for Dataspaces: Industry trends and initiatives are pointing towards the Cloud and Dataspaces. Ontologies are a key technology in this area, enabling a more efficient data sharing, integration, and analytics or distributed data. Publishing the VEC as ontology is our contribution to make electrical data even more useful in the future.

📌 Important Note:

This is an addition to the existing XML representation, not a replacement. Both representations will coexist, ensuring that users can choose the best option for their needs.

⚠️ Disclaimer:

This release is the first of its kind and is considered a preview/release candidate. We value your feedback to refine and perfect it.

Stay tuned for more updates and feel free to reach out with any questions or comments!

For further details, visit the RDF/OWL Mapping description or contact us directly. Your insights and feedback are invaluable as we move forward with this development!