The Smart Applications REFerence Ontology (SAREF)

The Smart Applications REFerence (SAREF) suite of ontologies forms a shared model of consensus intended to enable semantic interoperability between solutions from different providers and among various activity sectors in the Internet of Things (IoT), thus contributing to the development of data spaces.

SAREF is published as a set of open standards produced by ETSI Technical Committee Smart Machine-to-Machine communications (SmartM2M).

This ETSI portal for SAREF exposes the SAREF ontologies and points to the different SAREF-related deliverables.

The SAREF Development Framework and Workflow

NOTE: The text in this page is taken from ETSI TS 103 673, and therefore falls under the ETSI IPR Policy

The value of SAREF is strongly correlated with the size of its community of users; therefore the SAREF ontologies are available and documented on the Web. As such, SAREF users and the industry actors can be attracted to SAREF with clear documentation and a clear indication about how to provide their input and the kind of input that they can provide.

The ETSI members that contribute to SAREF are able to get benefit from feedback coming from its open community of industrial users, to better plan new evolution of the current and future extensions, and to reduce the costs of developing these extensions. That being said, the development and monitoring of SAREF lies in ETSI's hands to ensure that high quality standards are met, and users that provide feedback have to understand the implication in terms of IPR. The publication and/or use of such feedback has to therefore be controlled by ETSI, but the possibility to provide feedback is open to the world.

Document ETSI TS 103 673 [i.1] defines the development framework for the SAREF ontology and its extensions (referred to in a general way as SAREF projects) based on the ETSI forge. The SAREF development framework consists of the actors, software, and infrastructure that support the SAREF development workflows. ETSI TS 103 673 defines the different actors involved in the development of SAREF, and the workflows to be followed for new SAREF project versions, SAREF project version development, and SAREF project release. This document also defines how SAREF project versions are specified and documented in the SAREF public forge. The accompanying SAREF pipeline software enables to automatically check the conformance of SAREF project versions with respect to the this document. ETSI TS 103 673, the SAREF pipeline, and the SAREF public portal, enable the SAREF developers to speed up the development of SAREF and its extensions as well as the SAREF community of users to actively contribute in the development. The SAREF development framework and workflow is based on the requirements and guidelines defined in the associated ETSI TR 103 608 [i.2].

ETSI TS 103 673 V1.1.1 [i.3] has been developed in the context of the STF 578, which followed the STF 556. STF 578 was established with the goal to consolidate SAREF and its community of industrial users based on the experience of the EUREKA ITEA 12004 SEAS (Smart Energy Aware Systems) project. It aimed at specifying the SAREF publication framework to reinforce the engagement of its community of users and to enable them to implement solutions with SAREF faster.

ETSI TS 103 673 V1.2.1 [i.4] has been developed in the context of the STF 653, which aimed at consolidating the SAREF suite of ontologies and its development framework and workflow by defining and using reference ontology patterns.

References

  • [i.1] ETSI TS 103 673: "SmartM2M; SAREF Development Framework and Workflow, Streamlining the Development of SAREF and its Extensions".
  • [i.2] ETSI TR 103 608: "SmartM2M; SAREF publication framework reinforcing the engagement of its community of users".
  • [i.3] ETSI TS 103 673 (V1.1.1): "SmartM2M; SAREF Development Framework and Workflow, Streamlining the Development of SAREF and its Extensions".
  • [i.4] ETSI TS 103 673 (V1.2.1): "SmartM2M; SAREF Development Framework and Workflow, Streamlining the Development of SAREF and its Extensions".