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Apache Ossie and canonic do not compete. Ossie describes a semantic model so that tools can exchange it. canonic runs a model, enforces rules on it and reports how far an answer can be trusted. canonic can import an Ossie model, and that is the intended way to use the two together.
Last verified against the Apache Ossie project site in October 2026. The project is young and its specification is still changing.

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What each one is

Apache Ossie is an effort to standardize how semantic metadata is exchanged, formerly known as Open Semantic Interchange. It is incubating at the Apache Software Foundation and licensed under Apache 2.0. A semantic model is a top-level container with datasets, fields, dimensions, relationships and metrics. Metrics can span datasets and carry expressions in one or more SQL dialects, and a model can carry ai_context with instructions for agents. canonic is a local-first context layer. It reads definitions from several places, including an Ossie model, and compiles queries against its own semantics, contracts and knowledge files.

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Format versus engine

None of that is a weakness of a format. A format that tried to carry execution semantics for every tool would stop being portable. The cost is that a portable metric loses what only an engine can decide. The coffeehouse guide shows a concrete example: an average order value written as SUM(amount) / COUNT(order_id) counts order lines on a line-grain table, and nothing in the expression says so.

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What canonic does with an Ossie model

The ossie connector reads Ossie files and drafts canonic semantics, bindings and knowledge pages from them. Ossie has no notion of a connection, so you name the target connection that holds the data. What the connector cannot map, such as a metric with only an MDX expression, is named in a warning instead of being dropped. Everything it proposes enters at the inferred level and becomes part of the project only through review. A strict ingest run fails when a changed Ossie metric contradicts a human-curated measure. The ossie-retail guide walks through the whole flow. canonic does not export a model to Ossie today.

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Using them together

  1. Keep the Ossie model as the exchange format with the tools that speak it.
  2. Import it into canonic with the ossie connector and review the proposals.
  3. Add what the format cannot hold: guardrails on the data, binding kinds for non-additive metrics, and assertions for the values you have checked by hand.
  4. Re-run ingest when the Ossie model changes and let the strict run catch contradictions with curated facts.

canonic and other tools

The roles and a side-by-side table for dbt, Cube, LookML and Ossie.

Guide: Apache Ossie import

A project drafted entirely from an Ossie model.

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Sources