Section 3 - Definitions
For the purposes of this document the following definitions apply:
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Artifact Distribution Process | The process used to ensure comprehensive distribution of artifacts under CIM management to CIMug repositories and other subscribers of those artifacts. |
| Backwards Compatibility | The capability of a new version of the CIM UML to continue to support CIM Profiles designed to work with the old version of the CIM UML. |
| Canonical Data Model | See “Contextual Data Model” |
| CIM Model Manager | An individual that has overall responsibility for an IEC CIM Working Group’s artifacts under CIM management. A CIM Model Manager is a member of both the CIMug and an IEC Working Group |
| CIM Profile | A subset of the full CIM UML that is derived to define data exchanges required between systems. |
| CIM Users Group (CIMug) | A subgroup of the UCA International Users Group established to provide a forum in which users, consultants, and suppliers can cooperate and leverage the IEC CIM international standards to advance interoperability between utility enterprise systems. |
| Committee Draft (CD) | The first working draft of an IEC standard that is available for circulation to the members of the IEC TC57. |
| Committee Draft for Vote (CDV) | The draft of an IEC standard that has incorporated changes to the CD after addressing comments received from national committees about the CD. |
| Common Information Model (CIM, CIM UML) | An open source semantic information model expressed in the Unified Modeling Language (CIM UML) representing real-world electric utility objects and information entities, and the relationships between them (sometimes called a “domain model”). The CIM UML also represents the properties of the concepts as UML class attributes. |
| Compatible Change | When the changes incorporated in a new version of the CIM UML do not negatively affect existing CIM Profiles, then the change itself is considered a compatible change. |
| Conceptual Data Model | See “Semantic Information Model” |
| Configuration Management (CM) | The function of managing changes to the CIM UML and other work products performed by CIM Model Managers. |
| Configuration Management Plan (CMP) | A plan developed to define, document, control, implement, account for, and audit changes to the various CIM configuration items. The CMP provides information on the requirements and procedures necessary for CM activities and establishes the methodology for configuration identification and control of released and changes to configuration items. The CMP also describes the process for maintaining status accounting and verifying the completeness and correctness of configuration items throughout the CIM UML development life cycle. |
| Contextual Data Model | A subset of CIM elements constrained for a specific business context for use in a data exchange between systems. |
| Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) | The ongoing process of improving the CIM management process through incremental and breakthrough improvements. The goal of CPI is to improve the quality of the CIM UML or the efficiency of the CIM management process. |
| DER | Distributed Energy Resource |
| DERMS | Distributed Energy Resource Management System |
| Document Generation (DG) | The function performed by CIM Model Managers in which CIM UML based draft IEC standards are auto generated using jCleanCIM and a document template. |
| eap | The filename extension given to a Sparx Enterprise Architect project file stored in a proprietary file format in a computer file system. |
| eapx | The filename extension given to a Sparx Enterprise Architect project file stored as an XML document in a computer file system. |
| Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) | An independent, nonprofit organization for public interest energy and environmental research. EPRI conducts research, development, and demonstration projects for the benefit of the public in the United States and internationally. EPRI focuses on electricity generation, delivery, and use in collaboration with the electricity sector, its stakeholders and others to enhance the quality of life by making electric power safe, reliable, affordable, and environmentally responsible. |
| Energy Management System (EMS) | A software application used by operators of electric utility grids to monitor, control, and optimize the performance of a transmission network. |
| eXtensible Markup Language (XML) | A universal format for structured documents and data. XML documents are used to exchange structured data between utility systems. |
| Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) | The draft of an IEC standard that has incorporated changes to the CDV after addressing comments received from national committees about the CDV. The FDIS documents the completed version of the new standard to be circulated for approval by the national committees. |
| Forwards Compatibility | The capability of a new version of the CIM UML to support a range of future CIM Profiles. The extent of forwards compatibility is defined by the number of new use case interactions that can be supported with the new CIM UML. |
| Governance | The organizational structure, processes and policies by which the CIM UML is developed, deployed, and maintained. CIM model managers are responsible for governance of the CIM UML. |
| Incompatible Changes | Changes to the CIM UML that results in the new CIM UML no longer being compatible with existing CIM Profiles. |
| International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) | A global organization that publishes consensus-based International Standards and manages conformity assessment systems for electric and electronic products, systems and services, collectively known as electrotechnology. The IEC’s role is to facilitate the complicated process of reaching agreement (consensus) among the many experts from countries all over the world who volunteer to prepare the rules, specifications and terminology that allow manufacturers to build devices that work together, safely and as expected. |
| International Standard (IS) | The published version of an IEC international standard. |
| IETF | Internet Engineering Task Force. The Internet Engineering Task Force is an open standards organization, which develops and promotes voluntary Internet standards, in particular the standards that comprise the Internet protocol suite. |
| jCleanCIM | A java application that is used to auto generate draft model standards from the CIM UML. |
| Model Change Implementation (MCI) | The function of making changes to an existing CIM UML baseline to create a new CIM UML baseline performed by CIM Model Managers. |
| Model Change Management (MCM) | The function of identifying and managing CIM UML change requests performed by CIM Model Managers. |
| Model Change Management Plan (MCMP) | A documented plan to define, document, and track the information required to effectively manage change requests throughout the CIM UML development life cycle. |
| Model Change Validation (MCV) | The function of ensuring proposed CIM UML changes are in compliance with CIM modeling rules performed by CIM Model Managers. |
| Model Development (MD) | The function of developing new model elements and updating existing model elements performed by IEC Working Group members. |
| Model Distribution (MD) | The function of distributing CIM UML baselines to official repositories and authorized consumers of the CIM UML performed by CIM Model Managers. |
| Namespace Prefix (nsprefix) | A proxy for a namespace. Namespace prefixes are mapped to a namespace in the XML declaration of the namespace using a special attribute that starts with the letters xmlns. |
| New Work Item Proposal (NWIP) | A proposal for new IEC standard development work. The NWIP is the first work product created in the development of a new IEC standard. |
| Preliminary Work Item (PWI) | The work item produced during the Preliminary Stage of the IEC standard development process. The Preliminary Stage is applied for work items where no target dates can be established. This stage can be used for the elaboration of a New Work Item Proposal and the development of an initial draft. |
| Release | A release is the distribution of a baseline version of the CIM UML. A release may be either public or private (sent only to IEC Working Groups) and generally constitutes the initial generation of a new or upgraded model elements. |
| Resource Description Framework (RDF) | An XML schema used to provide a framework to create peer-to-peer relationships between data elements in an XML format (XML nodes). |
| Resource Description Framework Schema (RDFS) | A vocabulary for describing properties and classes of RDF resources and how those resources are linked in peer-to-peer relationships. |
| Semantic Information Model | A method of structuring information in order to represent it in a specific logical way. It is a conceptual data model that includes semantic information that adds a basic meaning to the data and the relationships between data concepts. The CIM UML is a semantic information model. |
| Sparx Enterprise Architect (Sparx EA) | The brand name for modeling tool used to host the CIM UML. Sparx Systems in the company that developed, maintains, and sells the tool. |
| Technical Committee 57 (TC57) | The technical committee of the IEC whose purpose is to prepare international standards for power systems control equipment and systems, and associated information exchange for real-time and non-real-time information used in the planning, operation and maintenance of power systems. |
| UCA | Utility Communications Association (see UCAIug) |
| UCA International Users Group (UCAIug) | A not-for-profit corporation focused on enabling utility domain system integration through the deployment of open standards, by providing a forum in which the various stakeholders in the energy and utility industry can work cooperatively together as members of a common organization. |
| UML Association | The semantic relationship between two or more classes. |
| UML Attribute | A named property of a class that describes a range of values that instances of that property may hold. |
| UML Class | A description of a set of objects that share the same attributes, relationships, and semantics. |
| UML Class Diagram | A diagram that shows a set of classes and their relationships; class diagrams address the static design view of a system. |
| UML Enumeration Literal | A named value that is part of a list of named values used as the range of a particular type. |
| UML Inheritance | The mechanism by which more-specific elements incorporate the structure of more-general elements. |
| UML Multiplicity | A specification of the range of allowable cardinalities that a set may assume; multiplicity is specified for attributes and associations. |
| UML Namespace | A scope in which names may be defined and used; within a namespace, each name denotes a unique element. |
| UML Stereotype | An extension of the vocabulary of the UML, which allows you to create new kinds of building blocks (classes) that are derived from existing ones but that are specific to your problem. |
| Unified Modeling Language (UML) | A graphical modeling language for visualizing, specifying, constructing, and documenting the artifacts of a software intensive system. The UML provides a collection of graphical model elements that have semantic meaning, and the rules for combining model elements for the purpose of communicating the conceptual and physical representation of a system. |
| Universal Resource Identifier (URI) | A sequence of characters that identifies the name and location of a file or resource in a uniform format. URIs provide a standard way for resources to be accessed by other computers across a network or over the World Wide Web. |
| Version Control Strategy | A specification of how versioning is implemented and communicated. |
| Web Ontology Language (OWL) | A language used to explicitly represent the meaning of terms in vocabularies and the relationships between those terms in machine interpretable content on the Web. |
| Working Draft (WD) | A draft version of an IEC standard that documents work in progress being performed by a working group project team. Working drafts by definition are incomplete and not available for circulation to the members of TC57. |
| Working Group | A group of individuals that collectively work to further develop the CIM UML and CIM based standards. |
| Working Group 13 (WG13) | The IEC TC57 working group responsible for developing standards for information exchange among systems supporting business functions directly involved with operation and planning of the overall interconnected electric grid. |
| Working Group 14 (WG14) | The IEC TC57 working group responsible for developing standards for information exchange among systems supporting business functions that support power system operations, maintenance and customer support. |
| Working Group 16 (WG16) | The IEC TC57 working group responsible for developing standards which facilitate the integration of electricity market application software developed independently by different vendors into a market management system, between market management systems and market participant systems. |
| Working Group 21 (WG21) | The IEC TC57 working group responsible for developing standards for system interfaces, communication protocols and profiles for industrial, home and building automation; and for retail markets, real time pricing, and traditional non-market load management. |
| XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) | An Object Management Group (OMG) standard for exchanging metadata information via Extensible Markup Language (XML). |
| XML Schema Definition (XSD) | An XML document that uses the XML Schema Definition Language to define the structure of CIM message payloads and CIM message headers. |