Introduction

The Aspect Model Editor is a visual editor for Aspect Models, which automatically validates the models against the open-source SAMM Aspect Meta Model version 2.1.0. All concepts, possibilities, and restrictions defined by the SAMM Aspect Meta Model are incorporated in the Aspect Model Editor in a convenient way with a smart user flow.

In addition to the version you are currently looking at, further versions of this documentation are also available, for example, for previous releases. They can be accessed from the dropdown menu located in the top right corner of this page.

Versions dropdown

Typically, Aspect Models are edited as code, that is, text-based. With the Aspect Model Editor, such code gets visualized so that relationships and dependencies within the model can be understood quickly and easily.

Aspect Models can be exported as TTL files and imported from TTL files at any moment during the work on the model. By that, the Aspect Model Editor caters to all working preferences.

Code versus editor

Two ways of creating Aspect Models: text-based and graphically – with the Aspect Model Editor

Target audience for the Aspect Model Editor

The Aspect Model Editor focuses on practitioners, such as domain experts or data experts, who intend to efficiently build reusable Aspect Models for the data and data sources of their domain.

Benefits

Especially for expert teams who model Aspects together, the visual representation of Aspect Models provides a low entry barrier and easy understanding, and facilitates collaboration.

In addition to that, constant background validation ensures that your Aspect Models correspond to the Semantic Aspect Meta Model (SAMM), enabling the reusability of your Aspect Models and automation of the downstream process steps for your Aspect Models.

Capabilities

  • Create Aspect Models from scratch or import TTL files to start or continue modeling in the Aspect Model Editor.

  • Navigate and edit your Aspect Models conveniently with a collapsed/extended view for your model details, auto-formatting, auto-saving, drag-and-drop of model elements, and many more.

  • Manage namespaces for your Aspect Models.

  • Save and export your Aspect Models and namespaces.

  • Generate JSON/JSON Schema from your Aspect Models.

  • Generate HTML documentation from your Aspect Models.

  • Generate OpenAPI specification from your Aspect Models.

  • Validate your Aspect Models continuously in the background and directly go from the validation results list to those locations in your Aspect Model where validation was not completed successfully.

About Aspects and Aspect Models

Each Aspect represents a small, encapsulated piece of information about, for example, a product, product component, or any other asset. Aspects enable reusable integration of data sources and offer semantically enriched data, that is, information. With APIs implemented for each Aspect, Aspects offer their information to software solutions, which consume the Aspects' meaningful data for operational or analytical purposes.

To do so, Aspect Models make sure that Aspect APIs do not just provide the raw, proprietary data from the underlying data sources but semantically enriched data – data that is meaningful for a domain expert. An Aspect Model describes, for example, the physical unit or the possible value range of a temperature sensor and indicates what a particular temperature at that sensor means with regard to the context of that sensor.

Each Aspect references a particular Aspect Model, which, in a machine-readable way, describes how that Aspect is structured – based on the SAMM Aspect Meta Model specification. For more information on Aspects and Aspect Models, refer to SAMM Aspect Meta Model version 2.1.0.

License

SPDX-License-Identifier: MPL-2.0

This program and the accompanying materials are made under the terms of Mozilla Public License.

All contained third-party materials are listed in the NOTICE.md file.