Universal Industrial Information Plug-and-Play?

In a LinkedIn post, Aleksandra Knödlseder asked, "Why is the “Plug & Play” in Industrial Software still a myth?"

Well, it seems to me that you must first have a global open industry standard technical format to transport the information package that will then be "plugged" into and then "played" by some software application that the information was plugged into.  In addition, you need some sort of meta-model or conceptualization, some shared understanding, that would specify what a model must look like to then be expressed using that global open industry standard technical format.

The graphic below explains a couple of other things that are necessary to achieve what was described in that LinkedIn post referenced above which describes industrial "plug & play". 

First, you need to make sure the sending and receiving software have the same "common shared world view".  For example, is the software making a closed world assumption (CWA) or open world assumption (OWA). Another question is if software is making the unique name assumption or not. Things like that make up the world view and software exchanging information must have a common shared world view.

Second, you have to have a shared logic framework, preferably one that avoids logical paradoxes which can cause catastrophic system failures.  Personally I think DATALOG is a really good candidate for that common shared inference logic.

Third, you need to have some common shared knowledge which follows the OMG MetaObject Facility (MOF).  Instances follow some model.  All models follow some meta-model.

The global open industry standard technical format carries a message, i.e. is a medium of information exchange, That medium is used to carry a message from some information bearer to some information receiver.

XBRL is a global open industry standard technical format. XBRL International also provides a logical  conceptualization of a business report per their Open Information Model (OIM). The Object Management Group (OMG) specifies a Standard Business Report Model (SBRM). I have created what I call my Seattle Method which is based on XBRL International's OIM and is the basis for Object Management Group's SBRM.  My Seattle Method was created more for financial statements, but the evidence that I see is that the ideas of the Seattle Method are also very applicable to general business reports. And so, OIM, SBRM, and the Seattle Method are very much aligned.  You can see this because I, being the good accountant, am reconciling all three.

The question is, "Does general business reporting provide everything that would be necessary in a universal industrial strength information exchange format that XBRL via OIM, SBRM, and the Seattle Method can be considered universal industrial strength 'plug-and-play'?"

What OIM, SBRM, and the Seattle Method enable is the creation of what amounts to "information blocks", that is the core pattern. Those information blocks can be understood if you use the Lego analogy. They are standard, scalable, modular, reusable, versatile, precision components. This list provides other capabilities.

XBRL-based information exchange provides the following (all of which are based on W3C standards):

• Global open industry standard physical format
• Multidimensional model
• Graph-type syntax (i.e. not document-type)
• Rules language
• Query language
• Custom models can be constructed (i.e. XBRL is extensible)

SBRM opens up business reporting to RDF, RDFS, OWL, SHACL, and SPARQL.  Although not tested nearly as much as XBRL, there are significant compelling reasons for the W3C stack of technologies.

You can see what XBRL via OIM, SBRM, and the Seattle Method provides in this Showcase of Capabilities.

Additional Information:

• Come Together
• XBRL is an Extra Fancy Knowledge Graph