EN IEC 61970-401:2022

SLOVENSKI STANDARD
01-oktober-2022
Aplikacijski programski vmesnik za sistem upravljanja z energijo (EMS-API) - 401.
del: Ogrodje profila
Energy management system application program interface (EMS-API) - Part 401: Profile
framework
Interface de programmation d'application pour système de gestion d'énergie (EMS-API) -
Partie 401: Spécification d'interface de composants (CIS) - Cadre général
Ta slovenski standard je istoveten z: EN IEC 61970-401:2022
ICS:
29.240.30 Krmilna oprema za Control equipment for electric
elektroenergetske sisteme power systems
35.200 Vmesniška in povezovalna Interface and interconnection
oprema equipment
2003-01.Slovenski inštitut za standardizacijo. Razmnoževanje celote ali delov tega standarda ni dovoljeno.

EUROPEAN STANDARD EN IEC 61970-401

NORME EUROPÉENNE
EUROPÄISCHE NORM July 2022
ICS 33.200
English Version
Energy management system application program interface
(EMS-API) - Part 401: Profile framework
(IEC 61970-401:2022)
Interface de programmation d'application pour système de Schnittstelle für Anwendungsprogramme für
gestion d'énergie (EMS-API) - Partie 401: Cadre de profils Netzführungssysteme (EMS-API) - Teil 401: Rahmenwerk
(IEC 61970-401:2022) für Profile
(IEC 61970-401:2022)
This European Standard was approved by CENELEC on 2022-07-04. CENELEC members are bound to comply with the CEN/CENELEC
Internal Regulations which stipulate the conditions for giving this European Standard the status of a national standard without any alteration.
Up-to-date lists and bibliographical references concerning such national standards may be obtained on application to the CEN-CENELEC
Management Centre or to any CENELEC member.
This European Standard exists in three official versions (English, French, German). A version in any other language made by translation
under the responsibility of a CENELEC member into its own language and notified to the CEN-CENELEC Management Centre has the
same status as the official versions.
CENELEC members are the national electrotechnical committees of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic,
Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the
Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,
Türkiye and the United Kingdom.

European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization
Comité Européen de Normalisation Electrotechnique
Europäisches Komitee für Elektrotechnische Normung
CEN-CENELEC Management Centre: Rue de la Science 23, B-1040 Brussels
© 2022 CENELEC All rights of exploitation in any form and by any means reserved worldwide for CENELEC Members.
Ref. No. EN IEC 61970-401:2022 E

European foreword
The text of document 57/2482/FDIS, future edition 1 of IEC 61970-401, prepared by IEC/TC 57
"Power systems management and associated information exchange" was submitted to the IEC-
CENELEC parallel vote and approved by CENELEC as EN IEC 61970-401:2022.
The following dates are fixed:
• latest date by which the document has to be implemented at national (dop) 2023-04-04
level by publication of an identical national standard or by endorsement
• latest date by which the national standards conflicting with the (dow) 2025-07-04
document have to be withdrawn
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of
patent rights. CENELEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.
Any feedback and questions on this document should be directed to the users’ national committee. A
complete listing of these bodies can be found on the CENELEC website.
Endorsement notice
The text of the International Standard IEC 61970-401:2022 was approved by CENELEC as a
European Standard without any modification.
Annex ZA
(normative)
Normative references to international publications
with their corresponding European publications
The following documents are referred to in the text in such a way that some or all of their content
constitutes requirements of this document. For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For
undated references, the latest edition of the referenced document (including any amendments)
applies.
NOTE 1 Where an International Publication has been modified by common modifications, indicated by (mod), the
relevant EN/HD applies.
NOTE 2 Up-to-date information on the latest versions of the European Standards listed in this annex is available
here: www.cenelec.eu.
Publication Year Title EN/HD Year
IEC 61968-11 - Application integration at electric utilities - EN 61968-11 -
System interfaces for distribution
management - Part 11: Common
information model (CIM) extensions for
distribution
IEC/TS 61970-2 - Energy management system application CLC/TS 61970-2 -
program interface (EMS-API) - Part 2:
Glossary
IEC 61970-300 series Energy management system application - -
program interface (EMS-API)
IEC 61970-501 2006 Energy management system application EN 61970-501 2006
program interface (EMS-API) - Part 501:
Common Information Model Resource
Description Framework (CIM RDF) schema
IEC 61970-552 - Energy management system application EN 61970-552 -
program interface (EMS-API) - Part 552:
CIMXML Model exchange format
OMG Unified- OMG document number: formal/2015-03- -
Modeling 01, available at ®
Language http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/2.5
World Wide Web- RDF 1.1 Primer from 24 June 2014, - -
Consortium (W3C) available at https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-
primer/
World Wide Web- RDF 1.1 Concepts and Abstract Syntax - -
Consortium (W3C) from 25 February 2014, available at
https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-concepts/
World Wide Web- RDF 1.1 XML Syntax from 25 February - -
Consortium (W3C) 2014, available at
https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-
grammar/
World Wide Web- RDF Schema 1.1 from 25 February 2014, - -
Consortium (W3C) available at https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-
schema/
World Wide Web- OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Primer - -
Consortium (W3C) (Second Edition), W3C Recommendation
11 December 2012, available at
https://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-primer/
World Wide Web- OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Structural - -
Consortium (W3C) Specification and Functional-Style Syntax
(Second Edition), W3C Recommendation
11 December 2012, available at
https://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-syntax/

IEC 61970-401 ®
Edition 1.0 2022-05
INTERNATIONAL
STANDARD
NORME
INTERNATIONALE
colour
inside
Energy management system application program interface (EMS-API) –

Part 401: Profile framework
Interface de programmation d’application pour systėme de gestion d’énergie

(EMS-API) –
Partie 401: Cadre de profils
INTERNATIONAL
ELECTROTECHNICAL
COMMISSION
COMMISSION
ELECTROTECHNIQUE
INTERNATIONALE
ICS 33.200 ISBN 978-2-8322-0093-3

– 2 – IEC 61970-401:2022 © IEC 2022
CONTENTS
FOREWORD . 5
INTRODUCTION . 7
1 Scope . 8
2 Normative references . 8
3 Terms, definitions and abbreviated terms . 9
3.1 Terms and definitions . 9
3.2 Abbreviated terms . 10
4 Overview . 11
4.1 Profiles and profiling . 11
4.2 Relations between Canonical CIM, profiles and datasets . 13
4.3 Profiles and business processes . 14
5 Profile document structure . 15
6 Profiling Use cases . 15
6.1 Overview. 15
6.2 Class in different profiles with no overlap . 16
6.3 Include overlapping sets of attributes and roles from the same class in
different profiles . 17
6.4 Include a base class with different sets of attributes or roles . 17
6.5 Extending an existing class . 17
6.6 Extending an existing class used differently in different profiles . 18
6.7 Different cardinalities . 18
6.8 Add a new datatype . 19
7 Profiling rules . 19
7.1 Overview. 19
7.2 R0101 Information model class, attribute, role and datatype names . 19
7.3 Class rules for classes without stereotype . 19
7.3.1 R0201 Including a class . 19
7.3.2 R0202 Adding a new class . 19
7.3.3 R0203 The description of a class . 19
7.3.4 R0204 Name of a class . 19
7.3.5 R0205 Cardinality of a class . 19
7.3.6 R0206 Concrete class. 20
7.4 Attribute rules . 20
7.4.1 R0301 Including an attribute . 20
7.4.2 R0302 Adding a new attribute . 20
7.4.3 R0303 The description of an attribute . 20
7.4.4 R0304 The name of an attribute. 20
7.4.5 R0305 The cardinality of an attribute . 20
7.4.6 R0306 The datatype of an attribute . 20
7.4.7 R0307 Initial value of an attribute . 20
7.5 Datatypes . 21
7.5.1 R0401 Including a datatype . 21
7.5.2 R0402 Adding a new datatype . 21
7.5.3 R0403 Primitive datatype . 21
7.5.4 R0405 CIMDatatype . 21
7.5.5 R0405 Compound datatype . 21

IEC 61970-401:2022 © IEC 2022 – 3 –
7.5.6 R0406 Enumeration . 21
7.5.7 R0407 The description of a datatype . 21
7.5.8 R0408 The name of a datatype . 21
7.6 Association rules . 22
7.6.1 R0501 Including an association . 22
7.6.2 R0502 Adding a new association . 22
7.6.3 R0503 The names of the two roles in an association . 22
7.6.4 R0504 The cardinality of an association role . 22
7.6.5 R0505 Association navigability . 22
7.6.6 R0506 The description of an association . 22
7.7 Attribute and association restrictions . 22
7.7.1 R0601 Overlap between profiles . 22
7.7.2 R0602 Same base class with different sets of attributes and
associations in different profiles . 23
7.8 R0701 Inheritance structure . 23
7.9 R0801 Constraints . 23
8 Extending Canonical CIM . 24
9 Requirements for a profiling tool . 24
9.1 Minimum requirements . 24
9.2 Extended requirements for OCL rules . 25
Annex A (informative) . 26
A.1 Mapping of UML to OWL . 26
A.2 Units and multipliers issue . 26
A.2.1 Description of issue . 26
A.2.2 Long term solution . 30
A.2.3 Medium term solution . 30
A.2.4 Temporary solution by flattening the profiles . 31
A.2.5 Temporary solution by fattening the CIMXML data . 31
A.2.6 Maintaining information for a flattened profile . 32

Figure 1 – Relations between standards and profiling . 12
Figure 2 – Relation between Canonical CIM, profiles and datasets . 13
Figure 3 – Class in different profiles with no overlap . 16
Figure 4 – Class in different profiles with overlap . 17
Figure 5 – Same base class with different sets of attributes or roles . 17
Figure 6 – Extending a class the same way in all applicable profiles . 18
Figure 7 – Extending an existing class used differently in different profiles . 18
Figure A.1 – CIMDatatype example in Canonical CIM and SSH profile . 27
Figure A.2 – ActivePower from IEC 61970-452:2021 (CIM16) . 28
Figure A.3 – Profile for ActivePower including CIMDatatype attributes . 28
Figure A.4 – CIMXML example with an ActivePower instance as an identified node . 29
Figure A.5 – CIMXML example with an ActivePower blank node serialisation example . 29
Figure A.6 – Profile for ActivePower based on CIM version 9 (CIM9) . 29

– 4 – IEC 61970-401:2022 © IEC 2022
Figure A.7 – CIMXML example with an ActivePower instance according to the original
serialisation . 29
Figure A.8 – Example of Flattened profile for ActivePower . 31

Table 1 – Abbreviated terms . 11
Table A.1 – UML and ontology languages . 26

IEC 61970-401:2022 © IEC 2022 – 5 –
INTERNATIONAL ELECTROTECHNICAL COMMISSION
____________
ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM APPLICATION
PROGRAM INTERFACE (EMS-API) –
Part 401: Profile framework
FOREWORD
1) The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is a worldwide organization for standardization comprising
all national electrotechnical committees (IEC National Committees). The object of IEC is to promote international
co-operation on all questions concerning standardization in the electrical and electronic fields. To this end and
in addition to other activities, IEC publishes International Standards, Technical Specifications, Technical Reports,
Publicly Available Specifications (PAS) and Guides (hereafter referred to as “IEC Publication(s)”). Their
preparation is entrusted to technical committees; any IEC National Committee interested in the subject dealt with
may participate in this preparatory work. International, governmental and non-governmental organizations liaising
with the IEC also participate in this preparation. IEC collaborates closely with the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) in accordance with conditions determined by agreement between the two organizations.
2) The formal decisions or agreements of IEC on technical matters express, as nearly as possible, an international
consensus of opinion on the relevant subjects since each technical committee has representation from all
interested IEC National Committees.
3) IEC Publications have the form of recommendations for international use and are accepted by IEC National
Committees in that sense. While all reasonable efforts are made to ensure that the technical content of IEC
Publications is accurate, IEC cannot be held responsible for the way in which they are used or for any
misinterpretation by any end user.
4) In order to promote international uniformity, IEC National Committees undertake to apply IEC Publications
transparently to the maximum extent possible in their national and regional publications. Any divergence between
any IEC Publication and the corresponding national or regional publication shall be clearly indicated in the latter.
5) IEC itself does not provide any attestation of conformity. Independent certification bodies provide conformity
assessment services and, in some areas, access to IEC marks of conformity. IEC is not responsible for any
services carried out by independent certification bodies.
6) All users should ensure that they have the latest edition of this publication.
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members of its technical committees and IEC National Committees for any personal injury, property damage or
other damage of any nature whatsoever, whether direct or indirect, or for costs (including legal fees) and
expenses arising out of the publication, use of, or reliance upon, this IEC Publication or any other IEC
Publications.
8) Attention is drawn to the Normative references cited in this publication. Use of the referenced publications is
indispensable for the correct application of this publication.
9) Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this IEC Publication may be the subject of patent
rights. IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.
IEC 61970-401 has been prepared by IEC technical committee 57: Power systems management
and associated information exchange. It is an International Standard.
This first edition cancels and replaces IEC TS IEC 61970-401 published in 2005. This edition
constitutes a technical revision.
This edition includes the following significant technical changes with respect to the previous
edition:
a) The previous edition of IEC TS 61970-401:2005 provided an overview of the Component
Interface Specifications (CIS) IEC 61970-402, IEC 61970-403, IEC 61970-404,
IEC 61970-405, and IEC 61970-407. IEC 61970-402 to IEC 61970-407 are duplicates of
existing OPC interfaces from OPC Foundation and the DAIS/HDA interfaces from OMG.
Hence IEC 61970-402 to IEC 61970-407 have been withdrawn and IEC TS 61970-401:2005
no longer serves a purpose.
– 6 – IEC 61970-401:2022 © IEC 2022
b) IEC 61970-401 (this document) does not contain an overview of Component Interface
Specifications (CIS) but instead a description of how to create profile specifications that
describes dataset contents (or message contents). Hence it has been renamed "Profile
framework". The profile specifications IEC 61970-450 (all parts) and IEC 61970-600 (all
parts) describe dataset contents. The purpose of this document is to define the rules to be
followed in the process of creating profile specifications.
The text of this International Standard is based on the following documents:
Draft Report on voting
57/2482/FDIS 57/2494/RVD
Full information on the voting for its approval can be found in the report on voting indicated in
the above table.
The language used for the development of this International Standard is English.
This document was drafted in accordance with ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2, and developed in
accordance with ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1 and ISO/IEC Directives, IEC Supplement, available
at www.iec.ch/members_experts/refdocs. The main document types developed by IEC are
described in greater detail at www.iec.ch/standardsdev/publications.
A list of all parts in the IEC 61970 series, published under the general title Energy management
system application program interface (EMS-API), can be found on the IEC website.
The committee has decided that the contents of this document will remain unchanged until the
stability date indicated on the IEC website under "http://webstore.iec.ch" in the data related to
the specific document. At this date, the document will be
• reconfirmed,
• withdrawn,
• replaced by a revised edition, or
• amended.
IMPORTANT – The "colour inside" logo on the cover page of this document indicates that it
contains colours which are considered to be useful for the correct understanding of its
contents. Users should therefore print this document using a colour printer.

IEC 61970-401:2022 © IEC 2022 – 7 –
INTRODUCTION
This document is one of the IEC 61970 series that defines message interfaces for network
application data exchange.
The IEC 61970-300 series of documents specify a canonical Common Information Model (CIM)
describing network application data. The CIM is an information model that represents all the
major objects in an electric utility enterprise needed to describe data used by power network
applications. The Canonical CIM provides the semantics for IEC 61970-450 (all parts) and
IEC 61970-600 (all parts) profile specifications dedicated to specific data exchanges.
This document describes the framework in which profile specifications are created from the
Canonical CIM. It describes the structure of profile documents and the rules for selection of
information from the Canonical CIM to be included in profile specifications.
The reasons for creating this document are
1) The IEC 61970 profiles have for a long time been created using a profiling method not
described by an IEC 61970 document.
2) The IEC 61970 profiling method has issues that need resolution. Issues and solutions are
described in Annex A.
– 8 – IEC 61970-401:2022 © IEC 2022
ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM APPLICATION
PROGRAM INTERFACE (EMS-API) –
Part 401: Profile framework
1 Scope
This document describes how IEC 61970-450 (all parts), IEC 61970-600 (all parts) profile
specifications are structured and created. Profile specifications describe a subset of the
Canonical CIM dedicated to a specific data exchange. The Canonical CIM is described in
IEC 61970-300 (all parts) as well as in IEC 61968-11.
Rules for creation or extension of Canonical CIM are outside the scope of this document.
This document specifies the structure of a profile specification and the rules for selecting
subsets of information from the Canonical CIM. It standardizes the operations used to create
the profile elements from the Canonical CIM. As Canonical CIM is described in UML the
operations are described in terms of UML classes, attributes, and roles.
It is possible to map UML to RDFS or OWL, so any of the languages UML, RDFS or OWL can
be used to describe the created profiles. Specification of languages (UML, RDFS or OWL) used
to describe profiles as well as how profiles are presented and edited in user interfaces are
outside the scope of this document. Languages used to describe profiles are specified in other
specifications. Relevant specifications are referenced in Clause 2.
UML supports adding free text that describes further restrictions on UML constructs, e.g.
classes, attribute values, association roles and cardinalities. Languages such as OCL and
SHACL are dedicated to describing constraints. OCL is used to describe constraints for object
data described in UML while SHACL is used to describe constraints on graph data described
by RDFS or OWL. OCL is within the scope of this document, but SHACL is not.
This document supports profiles describing data exchanged as CIMXML datasets or messages.
The exchange format within the scope is in accordance with IEC 61970-552 but other formats
are possible.
Tool interoperability and serialisation formats are outside the scope of this document.
2 Normative references
The following documents are referred to in the text in such a way that some or all of their content
constitutes the requirements of this document. For dated references, only the edition cited
applies. For undated references, the latest edition of the referenced document (including any
amendments) applies.
IEC 61968-11, Application integration at electric utilities – System interfaces for distribution
management – Part 11: Common information model (CIM) extensions for distribution
IEC TS 61970-2, Energy management system application program interface (EMS-API) – Part 2:
Glossary
IEC 61970-300 (all parts), Energy management system application program interface (EMS-API)

IEC 61970-401:2022 © IEC 2022 – 9 –
IEC 61970-501:2006, Energy management system application program interface (EMS-API) –
Part 501: Common Information Model Resource Description Framework (CIM RDF) schema
IEC 61970-552, Energy management system application program interface (EMS-API) –
Part 552: CIMXML Model exchange format ®
OMG Unified Modeling Language , OMG document number: formal/2015-03-01, available at
http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/2.5
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), RDF 1.1 Primer from 24 June 2014, available at
https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-primer/
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), RDF 1.1 Concepts and Abstract Syntax from 25 February
2014, available at https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf11-concepts/
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), RDF 1.1 XML Syntax from 25 February 2014, available at
https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar/
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), RDF Schema 1.1 from 25 February 2014, available at
https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Primer (Second Edition),
W3C Recommendation 11 December 2012, available at https://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-primer/
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Structural Specification
and Functional-Style Syntax (Second Edition), W3C Recommendation 11 December 2012,
available at https://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-syntax/
3 Terms, definitions and abbreviated terms
For the purposes of this document, the terms and definitions given in IEC TS 61970-2 and the
following apply.
ISO and IEC maintain terminological databases for use in standardization at the following
addresses:
• IEC Electropedia: available at http://www.electropedia.org/
• ISO Online browsing platform: available at http://www.iso.org/obp
3.1 Terms and definitions
3.1.1
Canonical CIM
agreed semantic information model describing the power system domain; the information model
aims at describing the power system domain in a normalized way without overlap
Note 1 to entry: The Canonical CIM is described in UML. UML can be serialized (saved as a document) in the
standardized data format XMI for exchange between UML tools. Ecore is another serialization format with capability
to describe UML.
__________
This specification is based on the W3C specification RDF Schema 1.0 from early 2000 which has since been
revised multiple times.
– 10 – IEC 61970-401:2022 © IEC 2022
3.1.2
profile
subset derived from Canonical CIM supporting the exchange of a specific set of data in a
specific context
Note 1 to entry: A semantic information model in the same way as Canonical CIM, can be serialized in several
different formats:
• XMI that is the serialisation format of UML as described by OMG, see clause 2;
• RDF/XML used to serialize RDFS or OWL;
• RDF/XML as described by IEC 61970-501. IEC 61970-501 contains several custom extensions to the RDFS
specification from 1999;
• Ecore for exchange with Eclipse Modelling Framework (EMF).
Note 2 to entry: The serialisation of IEC 61970 profiles is standardised by IEC 61970-501. A collection of profiles
supports a specific use case.
3.1.3
profiling
process of creating profiles
3.1.4
dataset
set of data described by a profile which means that the data in a dataset align with the
information described by the profile
Note 1 to entry: A profile does not say anything about the data format.
3.1.5
data format
datasets carrying data described by profiles as defined in this document using CIMXML
described in IEC 61970-552 and RDF/XML based on RDFS as described in IEC 61970-501
3.2 Abbreviated terms
The abbreviated terms are given in Table 1.

IEC 61970-401:2022 © IEC 2022 – 11 –
Table 1 – Abbreviated terms
Abbreviated term Description
CIMXML CIMXML is an RDF/XML data format and is described in the specification
IEC 61970-552.
RDF/XML A serialization format for RDF and graph data. For more details refer to the W3C
specification RDF 1.1 XML Syntax.
RDF RDF stands for Resource Description Framework and is an information model for
graph data consisting of a:
– Resource, in CIMXML this is an object identifier.
– Predicate, in CIMXML this is an attribute or role name.
– data item, in CIMXML this is a value or a resource reference.
For an introduction to RDF refer to the W3C specification RDF 1.1 Primer.
RDFS RDFS stands for RDF Schema and is an extension of RDF with capability to
describe a vocabulary for data-modelling. Hence it is an information modelling
language but with less capability than UML. For more details refer to the W3C
specification RDF Schema 1.1.
OWL is an ontology language supporting the semantic web, it is a further
OWL
development and extension of RDFS. For an introduction to OWL refer to the
W3C recommendation OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Primer (Second Edition).
UML UML stands for Unified Modelling Language. For more details refer to the OMG
specification formal/2015-03-01.

4 Overview
4.1 Profiles and profiling
Profiling is the process of selecting information from the Canonical CIM and including it in
profiles.
The Canonical CIM is described in IEC 61970-300 (all parts) and IEC 61968-11.
The guiding principle for the profiling method is that the information described by a profile is a
true subset of the Canonical CIM and retains class, role names, attribute names and datatypes
from the Canonical CIM. The datatypes in CIM are described by classes stereotyped Primitive,
CIMDatatype, and Compound. CIMDatatype is a composition of three attributes: value, unit,
and multiplier while Compound consists of an arbitrary set of attributes.
The main objective is that different datasets (see Clause 3) exchanged using different profiles
based on Canonical CIM solely rely on the definitions and basic principles of the Canonical CIM.
This is key to make interoperability feasible. This also enables different profiles to relate data
between them by using the Canonical CIM as a hub and supports a reader of a dataset or a
message to easily find descriptions of elements in both the profiles and the Canonical CIM. The
support for relating data in different datasets or messages described by different profiles is
needed when data is divided across different datasets governed by different profiles. Such use
cases are defined for network models where the network description is separated from the
operational conditions of the network (seen as an input) and the results.
There are several languages that can describe profiles, e.g. UML (serialized as XMI), RDFS,
Ecore or OWL. UML includes a graphical language that is implemented by UML editors. OWL
does not have a graphical language, but several editors exist that support the display and
editing of OWL data.
– 12 – IEC 61970-401:2022 © IEC 2022
Current profile specifications, IEC 61970-450 (all parts) and IEC 61970-600 (all parts) use UML
to describe the information and OCL to further restrict the information. A profile in UML is
described by classes, attributes, associations, roles and datatypes, the common way to
describe information in UML. The UML language includes the concept of stereotypes and
tagged values that enables custom extensions of the UML language. Hence profiling with UML
means copying and updating classes, attributes, associations, stereotypes and tagged values
from the Canonical CIM. A profile in RDFS or OWL is described by classes and properties but
UML stereotypes and tagged values do not have a direct mapping to RDFS/OWL. Profiling using
OWL mean creating OWL classes and properties by selecting UML classes, attributes, and roles
from Canonical CIM the same way as for profiling with UML. UML stereotypes and tagged values
need a specific mapping depending on the meaning of the stereotypes or tagged values.
Clause A.1 presents a mapping of the Canonical CIM UML to OWL.
Figure 1 gives an overview of the IEC 61970 specifications in the context of profiling.

Figure 1 – Relations between standards and profiling
The Canonical CIM is shown at the top in Figure 1. Based on the Canonical CIM and a context
for the usage, a contextual profile is created. A serialisation of the contextual profile is a
syntactic profile. The serialisation format for contextual profiles is described by IEC 61970-501.
IEC 61970-501 is the only graph based syntactic profile. Other syntactic profile exists, e.g. a
UML based tool can serialize the profile in the XMI format, a tool based on Eclipse Modelling
Framework (EMF) can serialize a profile in Ecore and an OWL based tool can use RDF/XML.
All these syntactic profiles describe the same contextual profile but, in a format, specific for the
chosen serialisation (UML/XMI, Ecore, RDFS, OWL, etc.). Each possible syntactic profile has
its own specification, e.g. like IEC 61970-501.
Datasets on CIMXML format are serialized according to IEC 61970-552 and the data in a
CIMXML dataset is described by a profile. The contextual and syntactic profile describe the
same information, the only difference being that the syntactic profile is machine readable and
can be used in processing or validation of CIMXML datasets.
Tools that process data described by profiles, created according to this document, need a
machine-readable serialization of the profiles, the syntactic profile. IEC 61970-501 is an RDFS
based serialization intended for this. Profiling tools shall support the generation of profiles in
the IEC 61970-501 serialisation format. Any tool, regardless of whether it is based on UML or
OWL, will have to serialize profiles into a syntactic profile that is used for exchange with other
tools or saved for persistency. IEC 61970-501 does not contain all information needed by
profiling tools, e.g. it is possible to generate a IEC 61970-501 syntactic profile from a UML
representation but not possible to recreate UML from a profile on IEC 61970-501 format. Hence
IEC 61970-501 cannot be used as an exchange format between UML based profiling tools.

IEC 61970-401:2022 © IEC 2022 – 13 –
Standardized vocabularies, that may be used in addition to Canonical CIM, are available from
many sources, e.g.:
• The Dublin Core™ from the Dublin Core Metadata initiative dated 18 December 2006,
• The Profiles Vocabulary (DX-PROF) from W3C, a note dated 18 December 2019,
• Profile Guidance from W3C, a draft dated 24 November 2021.
How such vocabularies may be used together with Canonical CIM is not described and requires
further development.
4.2 Relations between Canonical CIM, profiles and datasets
The CIM specifications can be divided in two groups:
• Canonical CIM,
• Profile derived from Canonical CIM.
The Canonical CIM is an information model for the power system domain standardized by IEC
and it is intended to be normalized (information is described only once) without duplicate
definitions of the same concept. Canonical CIM is intended to be an information model for the
concepts in a domain and not a description of data exchanged by messages.
A profile is a subset of the Canonical CIM intended for a specific data exchange in a specific
context, hence a profile is an information model for exchanged data. Information from Canonical
CIM is divided into profiles that describe data exchange in different contexts; examples are
equipment data that is relatively stable with a low change frequency and power system state
that change in times from milliseconds up to hours depending on the use case. The context for
equipment data is typically a data modeller tool where the equipment data is maintained while
the context for power system state could be real time systems (WAMS, SCADA) or operational
planning systems.
IEC 61970 (all parts) support analytical functions used in studies of power systems. A case
used in a study is assembled by several datasets described by different profiles, e.g. to run a
power flow both equipment data and power system state are needed. Hence the IEC 61970
profiles are dependent on each other and use cases typically involve multiple datasets
described by different profiles.
This Subclause (4.2) explains the relationship between the information discussed above and in
4.1. Figure 2 shows the dependencies.

Figure 2 – Relation between Canonical CIM, profiles and datasets

– 14 – IEC 61970-401:2022 © IEC 2022
Figure 2 describes the relations between the Canonical CIM, profiles and datasets. The
Canonical CIM at the top of Figure 2 is described in IEC 61970-300 (all parts) and in
IEC 61968-11. The profiling process described in this document is represented by the arrow
“Derived from” and the “Profiling tool” that is used to create the “Syntactic profiles”. Examples
of profiles created using the profiling process are IEC 61970-450 (all parts) and IEC 61970-600
(all parts).
The datasets (bottom of Figure 2) are typically exchanged as CIMXML files but other data
formats are possible if they comply with profiles generated according to this document. A
dataset is described by a profile (“Described by” in Figure 2) and is serialized as CIMXML files
as described in IEC 61970-552.
The “Dataset tool” processes “Datasets”, e.g. export, import, validation, etc. A “Dataset tool”
could be hardcoded against a set of profiles but could also import profiles and use them upon
processing as indicated in Figure 2 with the arrow “Profile import”. For this to work, a machine-
readable version of a profile is needed such as a syntactic profile on RDFS format as described
in IEC 61970-501. Serializations for other information modelling languages are also possible,
e.g. XMI, OWL or Ecore, but IEC 61970 uses RDF based technologies as defined by
IEC 61970-501. The ability for a “Dataset tool” to import and use a machine-readable version
of a profile (“Profile import” in Figure 2) is sometimes referred to as a model-driven architecture
as the tool adapts to the profiles. To support a model-driven usage the “Dataset tool” the
“Profiling tool” shall import and export syntactic profiles on IEC 61970-501 format. Example use
cases for syntactic profiles are:
• Profiling tools that read, update, and save profiles.
• Validation tools that read CIMXML files and check that they comply with syntactic profiles.
• Data management tools that import and export CIMXML files.
• Analytical functions importing input data and exporting result data.
The syntactic profile language in IEC 61970-501:2006 has custom extensions to RDFS as the
RDFS standard had not yet been finalized when IEC 61970-501 was published. RDFS has
evolved and has been extended so that IEC 61970-501:2006 custom extensions can be
replaced. Also note that IEC 61970-501:2006 does not provide sufficient information to en
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