Re: Model Once, Represent Everywhere: UDA (Unified Data Architecture) at Netflix

On Thu, Jun 12, 2025 at 12:16 PM Jesse Wright <jesse.wright@jesus.ox.ac.uk>
wrote:

> Hi Alexandre,
>
> Very nicely written post!
>

Thanks!

It sounds like part of the tooling developed in the process includes
> tooling to specifically transpile SHACL into schemas and code. I expect
> many people on this mailing list have or use tools which do this - and
> would be interested in your solution.
>

We did use SHACL as a modeling tool initially but that didn't work well for
us for many reasons. Upper goes the other way: we transpile Upper domain
models into SHACL shapes for things we need to validate in the RDF world.
So SHACL becomes yet another projection supported by UDA.


> Is any of the tooling that you've developed for this publicly available?
>

Not yet but it's coming soon. We underestimated how much work would be
required to make that possible. We do intend to share with the community
and were/are interested in standardizing if there is interest.

Alexandre


>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Jesse Wright
> DPhil Computer Science
> Jesus College
>
> mailto:jesse.wright@cs.ox.ac.uk <jesse.wright@cs.ox.ac.uk>
> https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/jesse.wright/
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-wright-49823a132/
> Book a meeting: https://cal.com/jesse-wright-zdbdal/public
> Mobile: +44 7862 381 515
> WhatsApp: +61 468 669 019
>
> *My work day may look different than yours. Please do not feel obligated
> to respond outside of your normal working hours.*
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Alexandre Bertails <abertails@netflix.com>
> *Sent:* Thursday, June 12, 2025 7:46 PM
> *To:* public-shacl@w3.org <public-shacl@w3.org>
> *Subject:* Model Once, Represent Everywhere: UDA (Unified Data
> Architecture) at Netflix
>
> Folks,
>
> I'm excited to finally share more about Netflix’s motivation for joining
> this group. Today, we’ve introduced UDA (Unified Data Architecture) [1] to
> the public:
>
> [1] https://netflixtechblog.com/uda-unified-data-architecture-6a6aee261d8d
>
> > UDA (Unified Data Architecture) is the foundation for connected data in
> Content Engineering at Netflix. It enables teams to model domains once and
> represent them consistently across systems — powering automation,
> discoverability, and semantic interoperability.
>
> This post introduces the foundations of UDA as a knowledge graph,
> connecting domain models to data containers through mappings, and is
> grounded in a metamodel we call Upper (short for "upper ontology") which
> may be of particular interest to this group.
>
> Upper is a self-referential, self-describing, and self-validating modeling
> language built on top of SHACL. It extends SHACL’s expressivity for domain
> modeling and introduces additional constraints that support strong typing,
> projections, and introspection. In our architecture, every
> upper:DomainModel is, by design, also a SHACL ontology.
>
> We see Upper as a SHACL profile, and equally as a profile of RDF. Any
> conceptual RDF can be described, as long as it is governed by a domain
> model defined in Upper.
>
> Beyond modeling, UDA also productionalizes RDF:
>
> * Every piece of data is stored in a Named Graphs, each conforming to a
> governing model and owned by a team.
> * Upper itself is part of the bootstrapping set of domain models,
> alongside formalizations of RDF, RDFS, OWL, SHACL, and XSD.
> * Our internal partners have contributed axiomatizations of SKOS and DCAT
> using Upper, introduced in the post as well.
> * We also introduce the notion of composable universes, where Named Graphs
> resolve into Governed Graphs via follow-your-nose import predicates
> declared in governing models.
>
> We’ll be sharing more technical details on Upper in the coming weeks. In
> the meantime, I’d be happy to answer any questions.
>
> Best,
> Alexandre Bertails
>