The members of OASIS have bravely taken the job of defining structured information standards for the rest of the world. It’s a tough job, but somebody had to do it.
Who is Who?
There is a global consortium known as OASIS – The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards – which drives the development and adoption of the web service and e-business global standards, and members of this consortium decide on the best way to define structured information standards democratically.
“I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a democrat.” Will Rogers
But really, they are responsible for the structured information standards worldwide, so they must be organized. We can’t have somebody organizing our structure of information standards if they’re not organized themselves can we?
Here’s a small sample (not that kind of sample!) of the information standards they’ve structured (or are under development)
- CAP – This is the Common Alerting Protocol – a data format based on XML for exchanges public warnings and any emergencies between technologies
- CIQ – The Customer Information Quality, an XML specification used for defining, interoperating, representing and managing third party information (names, addresses, emails etc).
- EDITS – Everybody Does It The Same (not really, just making sure you’re paying attention).
- UDDI – The Universal Description Discovery and Integration, XML based registry useful for both companies and individuals to list their web services.
Structured Information Standards
So why is it so important that we all use the same structured information standards? Well, we’re all trying to talk to each other, do business with each other, trade with each other and learn from each other, all around the world. Imagine a world where we all spoke the same language, – it might be boring but it would make ordering your crepes easier next time you were in Paris. Well, those boffins at OASIS recognized that fact, luckily for the rest of us, and now it doesn’t matter where your computer lives, it can talk to other computers around the world by using structured information standards. Of course, you’ll still have to decipher the words for yourself, but there’s always Google translate if you’re really stuck.