Xtensible is known within the Electric Utility Industry as leader in the development and implementation of the IEC CIM for utilities world-wide. Over a decade ago Xtensible developed CIM EA as a tool for organizations to manage their CIM based implementations by offering capabilities including:
- Creating CIM Profiles
- Managing classes, attributes, and associations to a CIM Profile
- Edit an existing CIM Profiles
- Adjust multiplicity, root element and abstract settings
- Create and organize CIM Profile Groups
- Generate artifacts
Xtensible has made a strategic decision to establish an end-to-end Enterprise Semantic and Metadata Management solution Affirma thereby discontinuing the support of CIM EA.
Why this Strategic Direction?
With the increase of available data within organizations not only in the electric utility industry but across all verticals, there is a demand to go beyond simply utilizing industry standard data models. It is now about managing the complete data life-cycle, from source to data model, to implementation whether that is through data pipelines, analytics, utilizing Machine Learning or AI. Accomplishing what we refer to as the “connected data journey”.
Uniqueness of Affirma?
The traditional CIM is managed in a UML based data model, Affirma has innovated this industry standard to generate an OWL based ontology. The carries significant power in various fields, particularly in knowledge representation, data management, artificial intelligence, and information science overall. The CIM ontology becomes the foundation for the “connected data journey” provided by Affirma built upon leading W3C standards (i.e. SKOS, DCAT, PROV-O), paving the way for active metadata management and utilization of cognitive AI.
Affirma Expanded Capabilities
Affirma supports all previous CIM EA capabilities and in addition links the common information data model to other core business capabilities necessary for electric utilities:
 |
Enterprise Semantic Model Manage your Enterprise Semantic Model across your data architecture. It is a harmonized superset of your data sources. With the ability to make use of industry standards such as the BIAN, tmforum SID, IEC CIM and others. |
 |
Data Catalog Ability to build, manage and update your data. The Data Catalog includes industry standard models, proprietary models, interfaces and other schemas. |
 |
Data Dictionary Ability to build a common data definition across your organization by generating it from your semantic definitions. This includes the contextual information for your data sharable between business and IT. |
 |
Data Design Ability to generate schemas from your common data definition. Data Designs are platform independent schemas supporting DDL, XSD, JSON, etc. |
 |
Integration Design Ability to describe the functionality of web-services and micro-services. Integration Design generates WSDL, SOAP, etc. |
 |
Data Profiling Ability to connect source systems or interfaces to profile data. Statistical analysis, with attribute assessments, correlation identification and cleanup suggestions are possible. |
 |
Data Lineage Ability to understand both upstream and downstream lineage tracing of your data capturing data origin, user action and more. It is foundational for utilization of graph-node capabilities and AI and ML integration. |
 |
Mapping and Transformation Ability to code, store and execute mappings and transformations and use for data verification purposes. Mappings and Transformations are reusable and therefore ensure consistency. |
To learn more please visit the Affirma Product Website or contact us at sales@xtensible.net.