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XML and Standards
XML - the eXtensible Markup Language - is often hailed as a "standard" which will promote interoperability. It allows documents to go cross-platform and between applications while maintaining their expressive richness, making them easy to process. This claim is true, in a sense - XML is critical in creating this freedom for your data. On its own, however, it is not enough. Realizing the full potential of XML requires that there be standard semantics, which a receiving or sending application understands when it intertacts with your own system.
XML is not a markup language, or tag set - it is a language for describing markup languages. This has given rise to a large number of standard tag sets which are expressed in XML. Such "XML standards" provide the application semantics which allow the full power of XML to be brought to bear.
Æon specializes in working with XML standards and related data exchange languages. Both as implementors and as creators, Æon staff have dealt with many of the most important standards in fields such as e-commerce and e-government. Whether you are looking for someone to represent your corporate interest in an industry standards body, to integrate your systems using an XML standard, or to help your standards organization with expert advice on XML design and working process, Æon has the experience you need.
Important Standards
Below is a list of some of the major XML standards with which Æon has experience. Some are emerging standards in important areas, while others are in common use in various industries and applications today.
XML Business Document Standards
xCBL - the XML Common Business Library: xCBL was developed and used extensively by Commerce One to drive e-commerce portal platforms. It was the first XML standard for e-business to leverage the potential of XML schema languages and modular design. It formed the basis on which OASIS' Universal Business Library (UBL) was constructed.
RosettaNet: Coming originally from the Electronics industry, today Rosettanet is a subsidiary of the Uniform Code Council (UCC), and has expanded its breadth considerably. It was one of the first standards to place strong emphasis on the need for explicit process modelling to drive the standardization of XML documents for e-business.
Open Applications Group: OAG's XML interfaces started life as an ERP integration tool, but with the advent of e-commerce - and the need for ERP systems to cross corporate boundaries - it has become a major standard for e-commerce and supply-chain management in the automotive industry and others.
UBL - The Universal Business Language: Unlike many e-business standards, UBL is an open standard, maintained not by a consortium, but by OASIS. Based on earlier work - notably xCBL and the ebXML Core Components modelling specification from UN/CEFACT - it has also had input from many other successful e-business standards, such as RosettaNet and OAG. It does not spring from any particular industry or technology field but has been designed as a generic set of universally applicable business documents. In its 1.0 version, it provides a core set of documents, a component library of reusable XML types, and guidelines for the extension of the existing business documents.
UCCNet: UCC - the Uniform Code Council - is the US branch of EAN, and is responsible for some fundamental business technology standards, notably bar codes. UCCNet is an initiative which allows for the registration of items for use within e-commerce systems, providing an important cornerstone for doing e-business. Without a global understanding of what products are offered or needed, it is impossisble to fully automate the supply chain. UCCNet provides this critical block of standardization, along with the needed run-time portal services.
ISO 15022: An ISO standard created by a number of the major players in the payments processing industry, ISO 15022 provides a methodology for designing payments messages, relying on an external Data Field Dictionary and a Catalogue of Messages. It uses the ebXML Core Components specification as a major contributor to its modelling methodology and repository.
Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG): AIAG is a user of the OAG XML documents for supply-chain management, and has also been very forward-looking in its use of modeling standards such as ebXML Core Components.
American Petroleum's Institute's Petroluem Industry Data Exchange Committee (PIDX): PIDX offers a set of standard XML transactions for field services, now in the 1.2 version.
ACORD: ACORD offers a number of data models and XML standards for various transactions in the Insurance industry. They have been particpants in many of the global standardization efforts in XML modeling and document design, including the ebXML Core Components work and OASIS' Universal Business Library (UBL).
Data Modelling Standards
ISO 11179: A major standard for the creation of data dictionaries in any syntax or industry, ISO 11179 has 6 parts, each available on the ISO website (http://www.iso.org - search on the ISO number 11179). It has also become the basis of standards for metadata repositories. ISO 11179 is a fundamental influence on data standardization, and impacts many of the XML standards in use today.
Unified Modeling Language (UML): This standard modeling methodology has become massively important to technology development of all sorts over the past few years. Developed by the Object Management Group (OMG), a 2.0 version is soon to be released. UML is in common use in the development of many open standards, for process modeling and document design.
XML Statistics/Metadata Standards
Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX): SDMX is an emerging standard which addresses the flow of statistical data using Internet technologies such as Web Services. It promises to make the provision of statistical data and related metadata ubiquitously available, and will revolutionize the way in which data are collected and exchanged.
Data Documentation Initiative (DDI): For the past decade, data archivists and social scientists have been using this SGML/XML-based metadata format to describe their data holdings, promoting standard discovery and processing techniques. Now in the process of creating a major revision based on W3C XML Schema and a modular design, DDI has become the preeminent standard for describing raw data and microdata for social sciences archives throughout the world.
Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL): XBRL is an XML format which allows reporting of balance-sheet and other types of accounting information. It relies on user-designed taxonomies to attach the needed standard semantics to reported data, providing a highly flexible way of leveraging XML in reporting systems.
Web Services Standards
UDDI: This important web-services registry specification is now an OASIS standard. While the 1.0 version was mostly useful for discovery, the 2.0 version provides a broader level of support for other web-services technologies, including some of the ebXML standards.
ebXML: ebXML was a joint intitiative between UN/CEFACT and OASIS, and recent developments promise an on-going collaboration between these two organizations to further this family of standards. ebXML provides a set of web-services standards for messaging, business process description, registry/repository functionality, semantic modelling, and the codification of trading partner agreements. Some standards are maintained by UN/CEFACT, while others are maintained at OASIS.
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP): A W3C standard, SOAP has become the basis for virtually all web-services messaging, and is well-supported by many different development packages. There are many different versions and implementations of this standard, however, so its use must be approached with some caution if interoperability between web-services applications on different technology platforms is to be achieved.
Web Services Description Language (WSDL):WSDL is another well-supported web-services standard, providing an XML format for describing how to interact with web services.
Web Sevices - Interoperability (WSI): WSI provides profiles of basic web-services standards (SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI) which will work with a wide range of vendor's products. Because many vendors implement these standards differently, WSI provides a crucial link in the development of interoperable web services.
Security Standards: There are too many security-related web-services standards to list here, but among those of interest are the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), XML Encryption, XML Signature, Canonical XML, eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML), and the XML Key Management Specification (XKMS).