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Apache Ossie (formerly Open Semantic Interchange) OSI

Read OSI/Apache Ossie is a JSON- and YAML-based specification for representing semantic-layer objects (datasets, metrics, dimensions, relationships) so that BI tools, data catalogs and AI/agentic applications compute a term like "churn rate" the same way regardless of which vendor's tool wrote the definition [1]. It is a document/interchange format, not a network protocol: there is no discovery endpoint or well-known path, and no runtime negotiation. Consumption happens by reading (or generating) a semantic-model file against the published JSON Schema -- which is why this record has been moved from the site's original 'account' placement to 'read': OSI is squarely about machine-readable representations of content (metric/data definitions) for consumption by BI and agent tooling, not about recording or attributing actions after the fact.

Overview

What it does not do: OSI/Ossie does not define an API, an audit trail, an authentication scheme, or a discovery mechanism. It says nothing about who is allowed to read or write a given semantic model, and it does not itself measure or certify adoption.

Current state. Snowflake announced OSI on 2025-09-23 with Salesforce, BlackRock, dbt Labs and RelationalAI as co-leads, alongside a larger coalition of BI/data vendors [1]. On 2026-01-27 Snowflake published "the first version of the OSI specification" as an Apache-2.0 repository and said governance would eventually move to a neutral foundation [2]. That move happened on 2026-06-22, when the project entered the Apache Incubator as "Apache Ossie (incubating)"; the original open-semantic-interchange GitHub organization now has zero public repositories, and its old repo URL redirects to github.com/apache/ossie [3]. As of this verification, the live core specification is versioned 0.2.0.dev0 and is explicitly marked DRAFT -- "schema may change before 0.2.0 is released" -- and the only Git tag in the history is a release-candidate, osi-0.1.1-rc1, not a 1.0 [4]. This means the January 2026 "specification finalized" headline describes the spec's first public release, not a stable/versioned final; readers should not assume OSI has reached a frozen v1.0.

Who implements it. The repository ships reference converters for a dozen vendor ecosystems -- Snowflake, Databricks, Salesforce, dbt, GoodData, NVIDIA, Omni, Polaris, Honeydew, Wisdom, OrionBelt and an ontology bridge -- but these live in a converters/ directory of a repo whose core spec is still draft, so they read as reference/example integrations rather than confirmed production deployments; this record conservatively marks implementation as 'prototype' rather than 'multi-implementation.'

Disputed / unknown. Whether OSI's broad vendor coalition (dbt Labs, Salesforce, BlackRock, Databricks, Mistral AI and ~30 others) reflects production adoption of the spec itself, or membership in a working group around a still-drafting spec, is not independently measurable from public sources. No probe has been run; adoption is marked unmeasured rather than claimed, because no single party made a countable claim we could cite. The vocabulary used by this site for 'track' does not have a category for an ASF Incubator podling, which is a materially different governance state from an informal community project.

Discovery and probe

none

GET https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apache/ossie/main/core-spec/ossie-schema.json
parse:     Fetch the JSON Schema, then validate a candidate semantic-model file (dataset/metric/dimension document) against it; a pass confirms the file is Ossie/OSI-conformant. There is no fixed well-known path or origin endpoint — OSI/Ossie is an exchanged document format, not a runtime discovery protocol.
on absent: If a tool claims 'OSI' or 'Ossie compatibility' but cannot produce a document that validates against this schema, the claim cannot be confirmed.

Not probed live: no-fixed-path. OSI is a schema for semantic models exchanged between tools, not an origin artefact.

History

Instances

Every instance with its source is listed on the instances page.

See also

References

  1. Snowflake announced the Open Semantic Interchange initiative on 2025-09-23 with Salesforce, BlackRock, dbt Labs and RelationalAI as co-leading partners, plus a wider coalition (Alation, Atlan, Tableau, ThoughtSpot, Sigma, Omni and others). — https://www.snowflake.com/en/news/press-releases/snowflake-salesforce-dbt-labs-and-more-revolutionize-data-readiness-for-ai-with-open-semantic-interchange-initiative/ (2025-09-23) VERIFIED
  2. Snowflake's 2026-01-27 post says 'the first version of the OSI specification is now available' via an Apache-2.0 licensed repo at github.com/open-semantic-interchange/OSI, and that OSI would later move to 'a neutral, foundation-led governance model.' — https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/open-semantic-interchanges-specs-finalized/ (2026-01-27) VERIFIED
  3. The project entered the Apache Incubator on 2026-06-22 as 'Apache Ossie (incubating)'; the original open-semantic-interchange GitHub org now shows 0 public repositories and github.com/open-semantic-interchange/OSI redirects to github.com/apache/ossie. — https://incubator.apache.org/projects/ossie.html (2026-06-22) VERIFIED
  4. The current core specification file (core-spec/spec.md) is headed 'DRAFT version -- in development, schema may change before 0.2.0 is released' and labelled Version 0.2.0.dev0; the repository's only Git tag is osi-0.1.1-rc1, not a v1.0 -- contradicting the 'specification finalized' framing of the January 2026 announcement. — https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apache/ossie/main/core-spec/spec.md (2026-09-05) VERIFIED

Disputed: Snowflake's January 2026 post is titled 'OSI Specification Finalized,' but the specification text in the repository is versioned 0.2.0.dev0 and explicitly marked DRAFT, with the only tagged release a release-candidate (osi-0.1.1-rc1). 'Finalized' appears to describe the *initial publication* of a spec document, not a stable/final version number. Separately, vocab.json has no track value for 'Apache Software Foundation incubator project' distinct from 'linux-foundation' (LF-specific) or 'industry-body' (trade association); 'community' was chosen as the least-wrong fit but understates that Ossie now has ASF Incubator governance (mentors, PPMC, a defined graduation process) rather than no formal governance.

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