Both within CEN/TC287 Working Group "Spatial Data Infrastructure" and among experts involved in INSPIRE, discussions are on-going whether or not a common European Conceptual Schema Language (CSL) is required "on top of" UML in order to facilitate interoperability between data models produced by different information communities. This discussion is further fanned by the fact that in various countries conceptual schema languages are being or have already been developed in support of data interoperability.

The goal of the workshop is to get a better idea of the issues involved by following a hands-on approach. In order to have material as basis for the workshop, participants will receive weeks prior to the workshop a data model, and are invited to map their national or regional data model to this "common" data model. Then, at the workshop, the participants will present their findings and an attempt is made to integrate data (a road network) into an application making use of the common model.

The objectives of the workshop are twofold:

1. Translation of a conceptual model between schema languages: to draw-up an inventory of the state of the art of operational and experimental software tools that allow for a model created in one schema language (e.g., Visio / ArcGIS Geodatabase) to be used in a different schema language (e.g., INTERLIS).
2. Model mapping: to map, for a specific application domain, an instance of a data model to a common data model.

1. Existing modelling initiatives are currently not based on a common conceptual schema language or tools. Therefore, in cross-community applications, issues of interoperability may arise that hinder effective deployment of solutions.
2. Mapping legacy data to common data schema may be a solution to data interoperability that avoids expensive re-engineering of data.

It is expected to draw up an overview of existing modelling tools. The participants will have hands-on experience with the exchange of data models among different conceptual schema languages and mapping between user specific data models and a common data model. Finally, discussions at the workshop should try to focus on answering the following questions: Do existing conceptual modelling languages satisfy our requirements for making geographic data models? Do we need a common conceptual schema language in Europe, e.g., by extensions to UML? Is it possible to identify a common approach to data models interchange (e.g., is XMI a solution)? Can data interoperability be sufficiently achieved through schema mapping? What tools exist? What are their limitations? Where are these tools located in the Spatial Data Infrastructure? Are they data production tools, are they integrated in the service architecture? Related questions addressed aside are stated in the annexes. The figure below depicts the relationship between the issues addressed by the workshop.