The semantic layer problem in enterprise data has resisted standardisation for years. Every BI tool, query engine, and AI agent arrives with its own interpretation of what a metric like “Monthly Active Users” means, and reconciling those definitions falls to overworked data teams working from conflicting spreadsheets. Apache Ossie (Incubating), the project now operating under Apache Software Foundation governance, is an attempt to fix that at the specification level.
The initiative launched in November 2025 as the Open Semantic Interchange, backed by 17 founding partners including Snowflake, Salesforce, and dbt Labs. Eight months later the coalition has grown to more than 50 organisations — Databricks, Oracle, Informatica, Collibra, Qlik, and BlackRock are among those that have joined — and the project has cleared the threshold for ASF incubation. The name change from OSI was practical: the original acronym was already in use elsewhere in the open source ecosystem.
The specification itself is YAML-based and machine-readable, providing a shared format for business metrics, dimensions, and their relationships. The intent is that any tool in the data stack — BI platform, query engine, AI agent — can reference the same agreed-upon definition rather than maintain its own. Mentors overseeing the incubation include ASF veterans from the Iceberg and Polaris projects, which now underpin much of the industry’s approach to open table formats.
Snowflake, which holds founding-member status and has several engineers serving as initial committers and PPMC members, frames the project as complementary to its own semantic capabilities: Semantic Views and Horizon Context implement the open principles on Snowflake’s platform, while Ossie aims to standardise the blueprint across the broader ecosystem. The company’s Director of Analytics Product Management, Josh Klahr, is available to discuss the project’s direction.
The ASF incubation process does not guarantee graduation, but it brings the open governance structure — consensus-driven, no single company in control — that has made Iceberg and Polaris credible choices for enterprises wary of vendor lock-in. If Ossie follows the same trajectory, it would give the semantic layer what the lake-house era gave storage: a common format that any vendor can build on.
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