OSSIE

Apache Ossie (incubating)
DevelopersApache Software Foundation and community contributors
ReleaseSeptember 23, 2025; 13 months ago (2025-09-23) (as Open Semantic Interchange)
TypeMetadata specification, semantic layer interchange format
LicenseApache License 2.0
Websiteossie.apache.org

Apache Ossie (incubating) is an open, vendor-neutral specification for expressing business metrics, dimensions, and the relationships between them, so that analytics, business intelligence (BI), and artificial intelligence (AI) tools can exchange semantic definitions without losing meaning. The project began in 2025 as the Open Semantic Interchange (OSI), an industry initiative led by Snowflake, and was accepted into the The_Apache_Software_Foundation Incubator in June 2026 under its current name.

Background

Organizations commonly define the same business concepts, such as "revenue" or "customer lifetime value", separately in each data warehouse, BI tool, and data catalog. These duplicated definitions can drift apart and produce inconsistent figures across systems. The problem gained attention with the spread of AI agents that generate queries against enterprise data, because an agent given only a database schema lacks the business logic needed to compute metrics correctly.

History

Open Semantic Interchange

On 23 September 2025, Snowflake announced the Open Semantic Interchange as an open-source initiative to create a vendor-neutral standard for defining and sharing semantic metadata. Snowflake_Inc, Salesforce (including Tableau), and Data_build_tool were the leading participants. The initial coalition also included RelationalAI , Mistral AI, Alation, Atlan, Blue Yonder, Cube, and Sigma among others.

The specification was subsequently released under the Apache License 2.0, with working groups formed and additional companies joining the initiative.

Move to the Apache Software Foundation

According to the Apache Incubator's status page, the project entered incubation on 22 June 2026. Snowflake and the Apache Software Foundation publicly announced the move on 8 July 2026, with the project renamed Apache Ossie. Project materials state that the specification, community, and mission were unchanged by the transition, while the name, governance home, and long-term direction changed. The incubator's record lists JB Onofré as champion, with Holden Karau, Zili Chen, Russell Spitzer, and Onofré as mentors.

Snowflake's announcement said the Foundation's vendor-neutral governance was meant to keep the standard from being controlled by a single company, and that the project would operate through public mailing lists, GitHub-based development, formal discussion and voting on specification changes, and committer status earned by contribution rather than employer affiliation. The project's mascot is a kangaroo.

Specification

Ossie defines a YAML-based format for describing metrics, dimensions, and relationships, intended to be readable and writable by any compliant tool. The aim is to capture not only metric formulas but also broader business context, so that both people and AI agents work from the same definitions.

Governance and community

Under Apache governance, the project's direction is expected to be set by the wider community rather than any single vendor. By mid-2026 the participating coalition had grown from 17 launch partners to more than 50 organizations. Three working groups, covering the metric language, catalogs, and ontologies, operate with designated leads and public channels. As an incubating project, Ossie is working toward the governance, infrastructure, and community practices expected of established Apache projects.

Implementations and ecosystem

Reference converters have been developed for several platforms, including:

Microsoft has publicly affirmed its commitment to the project and maintains a converter in the project repository. Trade coverage has described Microsoft and Google as backers. Other vendors, including Kyvos and Ataccama, have announced participation or open-source converters.

Planned work

Stated priorities include extending the specification to cover advanced metric logic, window functions, and complex relationships; adding converters for more platforms; defining a standardized semantic query specification; and integrating with Apache Polaris so that semantic models can be discovered directly from catalogs.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Ossie Project Incubation Status". The Apache Software Foundation Incubator. Apache Software Foundation. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "Apache Ossie(Incubating):Open Semantic Interchangeの新名称" [Apache Ossie (Incubating): The New Name for Open Semantic Interchange]. Snowflake Blog (in Japanese). Snowflake. 8 July 2026. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  3. ↑ "Snowflake, Salesforce Launch New Standard To Unify Data for AI". The New Stack. 23 September 2025. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  4. ↑ "LTVの計算式は、DDLのどこにも書いていない──AIエージェントに「データの意味」を渡すApache Ossie" [The LTV formula isn't written anywhere in the DDL: Apache Ossie gives AI agents "the meaning of data"]. CodeZine (in Japanese). Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  5. ↑ "Snowflake, Salesforce, dbt Labs, and More, Revolutionize Data Readiness for AI with Open Semantic Interchange Initiative" (Press release). Business Wire. 23 September 2025. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  6. ↑ "Snowflake, Salesforce, dbt Labs, BlackRock Introduce Open Semantic Interchange". Open Source For You. September 2025. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  7. ↑ "Ossie ontology into a RelationalAI PyRel Converter". GitHub. Retrieved 13 November 2026.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  8. ↑ "Apache Ossie <-> Cube converter". GitHub. Retrieved 13 November 2026.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  9. ↑ "Updates". Apache Ossie. Apache Software Foundation. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  10. 1 2 "Couche sémantique : Snowflake confie Open Semantic Interchange (OSI) à la fondation Apache" [Semantic layer: Snowflake entrusts Open Semantic Interchange (OSI) to the Apache foundation]. LeMagIT (in French). Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  11. ↑ "Open Semantic Interchange devient Apache Ossie et rejoint le programme Apache Incubator" [Open Semantic Interchange becomes Apache Ossie and joins the Apache Incubator program]. Decideo (in French). Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  12. ↑ "Apache Ossie(Incubating): Open Semantic Interchange의 새로운 이름" [Apache Ossie (Incubating): The New Name for Open Semantic Interchange]. Snowflake Blog (in Korean). Snowflake. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  13. ↑ Mitchell, Sean (July 2026). "Apache Ossie joins incubator to standardise metrics". IT Brief New Zealand. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  14. 1 2 "Microsoft & Snowflake's Commitment to Apache Ossie". Microsoft Fabric Community, Power BI Updates Blog. Microsoft. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  15. ↑ "Microsoft, Google back Apache Ossie to make enterprise data and AI platforms more interoperable". InfoWorld. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  16. ↑ "Kyvos Joins Apache Ossie Ecosystem, Bringing Speed and Context to Enterprise AI" (Press release). Newswire.ca. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
  17. ↑ "Ataccama open-sources data quality layer for AI agents via Ossie". Disrupts. Retrieved 13 November 2026.