usdm-rdf v0.3.0 — mechanical RDF/OWL rendering of USDM v4 with w3id linked-data publication

[kerfors]

Hi DDF-RA folks,

I'd like to surface a derivative project that produces a Turtle/OWL view of USDM v4 from the YAML CDISC publishes here. v0.3.0 just shipped with linked-data publication at w3id, and there's a governance question I want to raise explicitly.

What it is

kerfors/usdm-rdf is a mechanical conversion of USDM v4 to a single Turtle file, generated from Deliverables/UML/dataStructure.yml + sheet 1 of USDM_CT.xlsx. The published YAML already carries class- and attribute-level NCI C-Codes, preferred terms, definitions, cardinality, the composition-vs-reference distinction, inheritance, and the model-name-vs-serialization-key separation — so the gap between published USDM and a queryable RDF/OWL view is mechanical, not semantic. The repo closes that gap with three notebooks and a single Turtle deliverable.

How to consume it

Linked-data IRI: https://w3id.org/cdisc/usdm/v4/. Slash semantics — every minted IRI dereferences individually.

Request	Returns
https://w3id.org/cdisc/usdm/v4/Activity (browser)	HTML page anchored on the Activity class block — definition, NCIt anchor, codelist binding, modifier (Concrete/Abstract), domain-of links
same URL, Accept: text/turtle	canonical Turtle, version-pinned at v0.3.0 (8,184 triples)
same URL, Accept: application/ld+json / application/rdf+xml / application/n-triples	corresponding serialization
https://w3id.org/cdisc/usdm/v4/Activity-name (browser)	same HTML page, anchored at the property block

All five formats resolve via w3id with content negotiation as of 2026-05-03.

Live HTML: https://kerfors.github.io/usdm-rdf/

The HTML rendering uses WIDOCO with a small post-processor that injects skos:exactMatch (NCIt anchor) and the six usdm:* annotation properties (modifier, relationshipType, modelName, modelRepresentation, boundCodelist, boundCodelistNote) onto each entity block — WIDOCO's hard-coded LODE rendering doesn't show those by default.

What's in v0.3

• 86 named owl:Class (84 NCIt-anchored + 2 Extension classes by design)
• 693 properties (datatype + object combined; 312 NCIt-anchored)
• 4 multi-$ref Type ranges rendered as owl:unionOf — including two polymorphic associations (Condition.appliesToIds, StudyRole.appliesToIds) where the RDF view exposes a USDM v4 modelling feature the source UML hides
• Codelist bindings on the 57 Code-typed properties listed as Y-rows in USDM_CT.xlsx (45 with structured C-code, 12 free-text references to external dictionaries — ISO 3166, MedDRA, SNOMEDCT, etc. — preserved verbatim)
• OWL cardinality restrictions, Value/Ref distinction, inheritance

What's deliberately out of scope (v0.3)

• SULO or other upper-ontology alignment
• Sheet 2 of USDM_CT.xlsx (per-codelist permitted-value enumeration)
• Alignment to the CDISC Library RDF Administered Item vocabulary
• SHACL shapes for instance validation

Documented in docs/known-gaps.md.

Governance handoff — explicit offer

This is a draft, not a normative CDISC artifact. The minted IRIs live under w3id.org/cdisc/usdm/v4/, which is a redirect service rather than a host. If CDISC takes over governance, transfer is a single PR against the w3id .htaccess to change the redirect target — no minted IRI moves, no consumer needs to refetch. Rationale and design choices in docs/iri-and-governance.md.

The handoff is offered explicitly. If there's interest on the CDISC side, I'm happy to coordinate.

Pointers

• v0.3.0 release: https://github.com/kerfors/usdm-rdf/releases/tag/v0.3.0
• w3id PR for the slash redirects: cdisc/usdm/v4: switch to slash semantics with content negotiation (v0.3) perma-id/w3id.org#6012 (merged)
• Migration from v0.2 (a four-day-old hash-IRI version that's now superseded): docs/v0.2-to-v0.3-migration.md

Acknowledgement

This entire project depends on the work of CDISC and the DDF-RA team for the self-describing dataStructure.yml. Without it, the conversion would be neither mechanical nor reproducible.

Happy to take questions or pushback on the modelling choices.

— Kerstin