Asset Description Metadata Schema for Software

 

IMPORTANT NOTICE  This data specification has been deprecated. It has been replaced by the Asset Description Metadata Schema solution.

 

ADMS.SW is a metadata vocabulary to describe software making it possible to more easily explore, find, and link software on the Web. The specification reuses existing specifications, such as DOAP, SPDX, ISO 19770-2, ADMS, and the Trove software map.

By using ADMS.SW to describe software in software forges, repositories, and catalogues, publishers increase discoverability and enable applications easily to consume software metadata. It allows software publishers to

• provide unique identifiers to software projects, software releases, and software packages through HTTP URIs and ISO 19770-2 identifying systems;
• keep their own system for documenting and storing software;
• improve indexing and visibility of software;
• describe software in a common way so that it can be seamlessly cross-queried and discovered through a single access point (e.g. Joinup);
• retrieve, compare and potentially link software  to one another; and
• identify software to be reused avoiding duplication and expensive development work.

Motivation

If Europe wants to realise its objectives of a Digital Single Market enabled through e-Government, it will need to develop a large number of software solutions for e-Government that must be interoperable across the borders of Member States and Sectors. In this context, Public administrations in Europe will increasingly need to coordinate the development of software solutions for e-Government and share and reuse these software solutions as free and open-source software (F/OSS). In recent years, many European countries and regions have constructed national and regional on-line platforms (software forges). Likewise, the European Commission is promoting the cross-border sharing and reuse of software via its new platform, Joinup,  and  has developed the vision to give better visibility to this software through the use of common descriptions, enabling the "federation" of software description metadata. This federation of software descriptions was first set up on the OSOR.EU platform and is continued on the Joinup platform. Emerging Semantic Web standards entail a major opportunity to further enhance and give more visibility to software descriptions on the Web. Better visibility will trigger the reuse of free and open-source software, which in turn will contribute to the interoperability of electronic public services provided by e-Government systems.

Milestones

• In January 2012 the Working Group was created;
• On 2 May 2012 version 0.3 entered a month-long public review period, ending on 2 June 2012.
• After the Working Group meeting of 2012.06.05 the name of the specification changed from ADMS.F/OSS to ADMS.SW. This implies the scope of the specification is not only to describe metadata of Free and Open Source Software Assets, but also other, non-F/OSS, Software Assets.
• On June 29 version v1.00 was released. 
• In August 2012 a spreadsheet template was released to generate ADMS.SW descriptions using Google Refine RDF extension;
• In November 2012 the software taxonomies listed in the ADMS.SW specification were described using SKOS and provided with multi-lingual labels (English, French, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, ...);
• In November 2012, an ADMS.SW Validator service was released.

Future plans

We foresee the following future activities:

• Provide an mapping and extraction mechanism to retrieve description metadata from ISO 19770-2-compliant software tags
• Support the implementation of an ADMS.SW export API plugin for FusionForge FusionForge and/or Allura by December 2012
• Support the implementation of AMDS.SW by at least 4 public sector software catalogues and forges by May 2013
• Implementation of ADMS.SW import, edit, and export features on Joinup v1.5 to federate software descriptions by June 2013

Known implementations

Google Refine RDF template for ADMS.SW

Owner: European Union

Date: June 2012

 

ADMS.SW plugin for FusionForge

Owner: Olivier Berger - Institut Mines - Telecom

Date: August 2012

 

ADMS.SW export for the Debian Package Tracking System

Owner: Olivier Berger - Institut Mines - Telecom

Date: August 2012

 

ADMS.SW plugin for Tuleap

Date: October 2012

 

 

 

Related news

• 2012-11-05 - Just released: ADMS.SW Validator to verify and visualise RDF software metadata
• 2012-08-30 - ADMS.SW used to introduce Semantic Web descriptions in the Debian Package Tracking System
• 2012-08-01 - News from Basque Country: Openness and Reuse of Applications Decree already approved
• 2012-07-04 - Cataloguing open source software preferred to running development forge
• 2012-06-21 - Exporting software description metadata from FusionForge
• 2012-06-14 - ADMS.SW v0.4 released today
• 2012-05-30 - ISA Contributor Agreement v 1.1 published and used on Joinup
• 2012-05-28 - Only one week left to participate in the public review of ADMS.F/OSS
• 2012-05-25 - Spain's Basque Country's administration to share all its software
• 2012-05-16 - RADion v1.00 officially released
• 2012-05-10 - Un vocabulaire pour les méta-données décrivant les logiciels paru pour appel à commentaires
• 2012-05-08 - 69 percent of software metadata vocabulary covered by existing work
• 2012-05-02 - Vocabulary for software metadata released for public review
• 2012-02-29 - Kroes replies to Munich: 'Standards in IT procurement will tackle the problem'
• 2012-02-10 - Group works on standard to automatically find open source software
• 2012-01-25 -  'Public administrations should join open source associations'
• 2012-01-18 - Welcome to the MPLv2!
• 2012-01-18 - EU - Establishment of the ADMS.F/OSS Working Group
• 2012-01-05 - EU - Survey: helping public authorities procure ICT based on standards
• 2011-12-11 - Do you use or contribute to free and open-source software for e-Government? Please take this survey

Related documents

• Help us give software taxonomies multilingual labels represented in SKOS
• ADMS-enabled federation of semantic asset repositories - Brochure
• Generate software description metadata from a spreadsheet with Refine RDF
• Generate ADMS asset descriptions from a spreadsheet with Refine RDF
• Implementing an ADMS.SW User Experience on Joinup
• ISA Deliverable: Process and Methodology for Developing Core Vocabularies
• ISA Deliverable: Report on existing Software Forges
• ISA Deliverable: The vision for an enhanced software description metadata schema and software catalogue for e-Government
• Public Open Source Software Procurement Models: The Next Generation
• SKOS used to publish the controlled vocabularies defined in ADMS on the Web
• Software Forges: Webinar 2012.05.22 on the technical aspects of interlinking software forge

ADMS.SW Working Group

Information on collaboration

Below you can find all the practical information on the tools used by the ADMS.SW Working Group to collaborate. Please click the links if referred to another page.

• The ADMS.SW Working Group: The current members of the ADMS.SW Working Group
• Arkadin: Arkadin is the conferencing system that is used for the weekly Virtual Meeting of the ADMS.SW Working Group. 
• Public mail archive: the public mail archive of the mailing list of ADMS.SW
• Issue tracker: This is where you can submit issues and comment on the issues that are already logged
• e-Library: All the documents of the ADMS.SW community. This contains the Virtual Meetings agenda and minutes, the use cases, controlled vocabularies, related work and other documents that are related to the ADMS.SW specifications.
• ISA Contributor Agreement v1.1

Meeting minutes

• Working Group Meeting 2012.01.24
• Working Group Meeting 2012.01.31
• Working Group Meeting 2012.02.07
• Working Group Meeting 2012.02.14
• Working Group Meeting 2012.02.21
• Working Group Meeting 2012.02.28
• Software Forges: Webinar 2012.05.22 on the technical aspects interlinking software forges
• Working Group Meeting 2012.06.05