Colectica Releases COGS 2.0 to Advance Open Metadata Standards
Colectica has released COGS 2.0, an open-source tool that turns shared information models into software libraries, schemas, diagrams, and documentation. With new Python and TypeScript support, stronger validation, and improved publishing, the release makes it easier to put metadata standards to work in applications. It also continues Colectica’s investment in the tools used to develop DDI Lifecycle and DDI SDTL.
From shared definitions to working software
The Convention-based Ontology Generation System (COGS) lets teams describe an information model once and use it to produce the materials that developers and users need. When a definition changes, teams can regenerate the related software, technical specifications, and documentation from the same source, reducing the work of maintaining each separately.
Models are written using accessible text files, spreadsheet-style definitions, and Markdown documentation. Subject specialists can contribute their knowledge without having to write schemas or application code, while developers can build on those definitions. This gives standards committees and software teams a practical way to collaborate on a shared model.
Bringing models to more applications
COGS 2.0 adds Python and TypeScript generation alongside its existing C# support. Teams can bring the same model into Python applications, JavaScript environments, and .NET software, with generated support for reading and writing JSON and XML.
For developers, this means less repetitive work translating a specification into classes and data-handling code. For organizations adopting a standard, it opens more ways to use that standard with the languages and tools their teams already know.
Engineering that connects design and delivery
The release strengthens the connections between a model, the software generated from it, and the information exchanged by applications. New instance validation helps teams check real data against their models, while expanded verification checks that structure and relationships are preserved across supported programming languages and formats.
Improved schema publishing makes models easier to implement and share. Clearer generated documentation helps people understand the definitions and relationships they are working with. Together, these capabilities demonstrate Colectica’s expertise in connecting complex information models, automated software generation, and standards publishing in a single development tool.
RDF and OWL ontologies for connected metadata
COGS 2.0 substantially improves ontology generation using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL). These ontologies describe concepts and relationships for use in knowledge graphs and linked-data applications, helping organizations connect their metadata with other systems without maintaining a separate ontology by hand.
The rebuilt OWL publisher produces readable Turtle, a standard format for RDF. Shared properties are defined once and reused consistently, while descriptions and rules specific to each class remain alongside that class. Consistent naming across ontology outputs and generated software helps developers connect their applications to the same shared vocabulary. These improvements are backed by extensive automated testing that checks both standards compliance and the definitions and relationships in the generated output. The tests exercise complex models, use independent RDF and OWL tools to examine the results, and by checking both the format and the content, Colectica helps teams publish, share, and reuse their models with greater confidence.
Sponsoring tools for the metadata community
Colectica is happy to sponsor and support open-source tooling that advances metadata standards. COGS is part of that commitment, making sophisticated modeling and publishing capabilities available to standards developers, researchers, and software teams.
DDI Lifecycle uses COGS in its model development and publishing work to support descriptions of studies, questionnaires, and data across the research lifecycle. DDI SDTL, the Structured Data Transformation Language, also uses COGS. SDTL documents how data are transformed, helping preserve the processing history behind research results.
Supporting the tools behind these standards helps communities maintain shared definitions and makes it easier for developers to build software that uses them. Colectica brings its experience developing metadata software to this work and shares the resulting tooling openly.
COGS 2.0 is available free under the MIT open-source license. Explore the COGS 2.0 release and the COGS project on GitHub to learn more, get the software, or contribute.
About Colectica
Colectica® helps organizations design, explain, manage, and share statistical research. Since 2010, its practical tools and services have helped government statistics agencies, survey researchers, data archives, and other data-intensive organizations document their work in common open standards.
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