Semantic Vocabularies
CEvery industry group has its own vocabulary for its activities. Various industry groups have been developing formal semantic vocabularies to take advantage of the Web services messaging protocols. Originally, many of these vocabularies were referred to as XML vocabularies.
Common Semantic Vocabularies
This is a listing of semantic vocabularies that can be shared among multiple industries or disciplines. New vocabularies are continually being developed and some vocabularies go away.
Address XML
Address Data Interchange Specification (ADIS): XML specification for the interchange of address data both domestically and internationally. It is based on storing the parts of an address, or address elements, and then combining them together with intelligent editing to create output formats, or renditions, for particular mail pieces. It includes data about the addresses, such as whether they are complete or missing particular elements that affect address quality.
eXtensible Name Address Language (xNAL): XML specification for managing name and address data regardless of country of origin. It consists of two parts: xNL, eXtensible Name Language, to define the name components, and xAL, eXtensible Address Language, to define the address components. xNL and xAL are part of the OASIS Customer Information Quality (CIQ) family of specifications.
Mail.XML: XML specification for communication between industry members and from industry to the final mail processing and delivery organization that delivers the mail to the end consumer (e.g., USPS).
Computing environment XML
Application Vulnerability Description Language (AVDL): An XML definition for exchange of information relating to security vulnerabilities of applications exposed to networks.
Intrusion Detection Message Exchange Format (IDMEF): Data formats and exchange procedures for sharing information of interest to intrusion detection and response systems and to management systems that may need to interact with them.
Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) Initiative: A set of management and Internet standard technologies developed to unify the management of enterprise computing environments. WBEM provides the ability for the industry to deliver a well-integrated set of standard-based management tools leveraging the emerging Web technologies. The DMTF has developed a core set of standards that make up WBEM, which includes a data model, the common information model (CIM) standard; an encoding specification, xmlCIM Encoding Specification; and a transport mechanism, CIM operations over HTTP. The CIM specification is the language and methodology for describing management data. The CIM schema includes models for systems, applications, networks (LAN), and devices. The CIM schema will enable applications from different developers on different platforms to describe management data in a standard format so that it can be shared among a variety of management applications. The xmlCIM Encoding Specification defines XML elements, written in document type definition (DTD), which can be used to represent CIM classes and instances. The CIM operations over HTTP specifications define a mapping of CIM operations onto HTTP that allows implementations of CIM to interoperate in an open, standardized manner and completes the technologies that support WBEM.
Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM): This specifies the Web services architecture and technology to manage distributed resources. It includes a model of a Web service as a manageable resource.
Web Application Security (WAS): This specification includes:
Content syndication XML
Information and Content Exchange (ICE): XML specification that, for content providers, standardizes the process for setting up subscribers and for delivering and managing subscriber content. For content subscribers, ICE standardizes the process for setting up a subscription and for automated content retrieval. The ICE specification provides businesses with an XML-based common language and architecture that facilitates automatic exchanging, updating, supplying, and controlling of assets in a trusted fashion without manual packaging or knowledge of remote website structures.
Real Simple Syndication (RSS): RSS is a dialect of XML for content syndication. Some say the acronym also stands for “Rich Site Summary.”
Customer information XML
eXtensible Customer Information Language (xCIL): Uses customer data such as telephone numbers, email addresses, account numbers, credit card numbers, etc. to uniquely identify a customer. This helps in achieving a single customer view, customer relationship management (CRM) strategies, understanding a customer profile, etc. xCIL is part of the OASIS Customer Information Quality (CIQ) family of specifications.
eXtensible Customer Relationships Language (xCRL): XML standard specification to represent customer relationships in a standard way to help achieve interoperability between different systems, processes, and platforms, and in building effective single-customer views. xNAL and xCIL are referenced by xCRL.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) XML
XML/EDI: XML specification to exchange different types of data (e.g., an invoice, healthcare claim, or project status). It includes implementing EDI dictionaries and online repositories to business language, rules, and objects.
Geospatial XML
City Geography Markup Language (CityGML): XML specification for the representation, storage, and exchange of virtual three-dimensional (3D) city and landscape models. CityGML is implemented as an application schema of the Geography Markup Language (see next). CityGML models both complex and geo-referenced 3D vector data along with the semantics associated with the data. CityGML is based on a general-purpose information model in addition to geometry and appearance information. For specific domain areas, CityGML also provides an extension mechanism to enrich the data with identifiable features while preserving semantic interoperability.
Geography Markup Language (GML): XML specification for expressing geographical features. GML serves as a modeling language for geographic systems as well as an open interchange format for geographic transactions on the Internet. A GML document allows users and developers to describe generic geographic data sets that contain points, lines, and polygons. The developers of GML envision communities working to define community-specific application schemas that are specialized extensions of GML. Using application schemas, users can refer to roads, highways, and bridges instead of points, lines, and polygons. If everyone in a community agrees to use the same schemas, they can exchange data more easily.
OGC Web Services (OWS): XML specification to extend and “ruggedize” existing and draft OpenGIS standards into a robust and complete interoperability framework for implementing multivendor enterprise—and enterprise-to-enterprise—solutions in government and business.
OpenGIS Location Services (OpenLS): XML specification to define access to the core services and abstract data types (ADTs) that comprise the GeoMobility Server, an open location services platform. Abstract data types are encoded in XML for location services (XLS). XLS is defined as the method for encoding request/response messages and associated abstract data types for the GeoMobility Server. The interfaces allow telecommunications companies, telematics service providers, traditional GIS technology companies, and location-based services (LBSs) providers to implement interoperable LBS applications that access multiple content repositories and service frameworks that work across many different wireless networks and devices.
Human XML
HumanML: XML schema and Resource Description Framework (RDF) schema specification containing sets of modules that frame and embed contextual human characteristics, including physical, cultural, social, kinesic, psychological, and intentional features within conveyed information.
Localization XML
XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF): XLIFF is an extensible specification for the interchange of localization information. The specification provides the ability to mark up and capture localizable data and interoperate with different processes or phases without loss of information. The vocabularies are tool neutral and support the localization-related aspects of internationalization and the entire localization process. The vocabularies support common software and content data formats.
Math XML
MathML: XML specification for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the Internet, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text.
OpenMath: XML specification for representing mathematical objects with their semantics, allowing them to be exchanged between computer programs, stored in databases, or published on the World Wide Web. There is a strong relationship to the MathML recommendation from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and a large overlap between the two developer communities. MathML deals principally with the presentation of mathematical objects, while OpenMath is solely concerned with their semantic meaning or content. While MathML does have some limited facilities for dealing with content, it also allows semantic information encoded in OpenMath to be embedded inside a MathML structure. Thus, the two specifications may be seen as complementary.
Open Mathematical Documents (OMDoc): XML specification for representing the semantics and structure of various kinds of mathematical documents, including articles, textbooks, interactive books, and courses. OMDoc is an extension of the OpenMath and MathML standards, and in particular of the content part of MathML.
eXtensible Data Format (XDF): XML specification of common scientific data format and general mathematical principles that can be used throughout the scientific disciplines. It includes these key features: hierarchical data structures, any dimensional arrays merged with coordinate information, high-dimensional tables merged with field information, variable resolution, easy wrapping of existing data, user-specified coordinate systems, searchable ASCII metadata, and extensibility to new features/data formats.
Open Applications Group Integration Specification (OAGIS)
Open Applications Group Integration Specification (OAGIS): OAGIS defines a common content model and common messages for communication between business applications. This includes application-to-application (A2A) and business-to-business (B2B) integration.
Open Office XML
Open Office XML: The OpenDocument Format (ODF) is an open XML-based document file format for office applications to be used for documents containing text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical elements. It is intended to meet the following requirements:
It must be suitable for office documents containing text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents.
It must be compatible with the W3C eXtensible Markup Language (XML) v1.0 and W3C Namespaces in XML v1.0 specifications.
It must retain high-level information suitable for editing the document.
It must be friendly to transformations using XSLT or similar XML-based languages or tools.
It should keep the document’s content and layout information separate such that they can be processed independently of each other.
It should “borrow” from similar, existing standards wherever possible and permitted.
Topic Maps XML
Topic Maps Published Subjects for Geography and Languages (GeoLang): GeoLang advances the use of the XML Topic Maps specification (ISO/IEC 13250:2000) for navigating information resources by defining published subjects for languages, countries, and regions. Languages, countries, and regions are subjects that occur frequently across a wide range of topic maps. To promote maximum reusability, interchangeability, and mergability, standardized sets of published subjects are required to cover these domains.
Trade XML
Controlled Trade Markup Language (CTML): XML specification of unified trade control vocabulary that supports an international collection of business documents (e.g, trade applications, cases, licenses, delivery verification certificates, etc.) through the extension and expansion of an existing XML vocabulary.
Translation XML
Translation Web Services: The intent is that any publisher of content to be translated should be able to automatically connect to and use the services of any translation vendor over the Internet without any previous direct communication between the two.
Universal Business Language (UBL)
Universal Business Language (UBL): This is an important development in the use of XML vocabularies. In any human language, the same word can mean different things for different industries. Conversely, different words sometimes can mean the same thing in different industries. The OASIS UBL Technical Committee’s charter is to define a common XML business document library. UBL will provide a set of XML building blocks and a framework that will enable trading partners to unambiguously identify and exchange business documents in specific contexts. This is an effort to unite efforts underway by organizations and standards groups around the world. The OASIS UBL Technical Committee intends to enhance and harmonize overlapping XML business libraries and similar technologies to advance consensus on an international standard.
Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF)
Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF): This is a cross-industry metadata identification strategy designed to facilitate convergence and interoperability among e-business and other standards. The objective of UDEF is to provide a means of real-time identification for semantic equivalency as an attribute to data elements within e-business document and integration formats. The supporters of UDEF hope that it can be seen as the “Dewey Decimal System” across standards. UDEF can be seen as only an attribute in the data element. There are no process, validation, or handling requirements. The intent is to communicate in a standard and repeatable way the exact concept that the data element represents. There is very little about context—just enough to identify the data element exactly.
Specific Semantic Vocabularies
This is a listing of semantic vocabularies that are specific to a particular industry or discipline. New vocabularies are continually being developed and some vocabularies go away.
Accounting XML
Small and Medium-sized Business XML (smbXML): XML specification for describing business transactions. smbXML is specifically designed for the needs of the small-to medium-sized business community.
Advertising XML
AdsML Framework: A set of XML specifications along with workflow and best practices designed to implement e-commerce communications for the buying, selling, delivering, receiving, invoicing, and paying of advertisements. All of the standards in the framework share both an e-commerce philosophy and a common set of design principles; they use common names and structures; and they support a common message choreography. The AdsML Framework aims to support all kinds of advertising, in all media, and through all stages of the lifecycle of an advertisement. Specifications for Publisher & Agency Communications Exchange XML (SPACE/XML): XML specification for electronic business transactions related to:
The standard was developed to get paid faster from a reduction in information errors that cause billing discrepancies. Additionally, the goal was to create the specifications for ad insertion orders to eliminate much of the confusion and misinformation that can result when insertion orders are sent by fax or mail. By establishing this set of standards, any publication or agency could receive electronic business information from any collaborative partner.
In 2005, IDEAlliance merged the SPACE specification into the AdsML Framework (see above).
Astronomy XML
Flexible Image Transport System Markup Language (FITSML): XML specification for astronomical data, such as images, spectra, tables, and sky atlases.
Building XML
oBIX: The Open Building Information Exchange specification that will enable enterprise applications to communicate with mechanical and electrical systems in buildings.
Chemistry XML
Chem eStandards: XML specification for data exchange developed specifically for the buying, selling, and delivery of chemicals.
Chemical Markup Language (CML): XML specification covering macromolecular sequences to inorganic molecules and quantum chemistry.
Construction XML
Architecture Description Markup Language (ADML): XML specification for architecture. ADML is based on ACME, an architecture description language. ADML adds to ACME, a standardized representation of the ability to define links to objects outside the architecture (e.g., rationale, designs, and components).
Education XML
Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF): An XML specification for data sharing among schools, kindergarten through twelfth grade.
Finance XML
eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL): XML specification that describes financial information for public and private companies and other organizations. They have created XML taxonomies. Since financial reporting varies by country, the taxonomies vary by country.
Financial Information eXchange (FIX) Protocol: XML specification for the real-time electronic exchange of securities transactions.
Financial Products Markup Language (FpML): XML specification for swaps, derivatives, and structured financial products.
Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX): XML specification for electronic bill presentment and payment, business-to-business payments, business-to-business banking (e.g., balance and transaction reporting, remittance information), automated teller machine communications, consumer-to-business payments, and consumer-to-business banking.
Market Data Definition Language (MDDL): XML specification to enable interchange of data necessary to account for, analyze, and trade instruments of the world’s financial markets. MDDL seeks, through definition of common terms, to provide a standard vocabulary so market data may be exchanged unambiguously between exchanges, vendors, redistributors, and subscribers. MDDL is designed to facilitate delivery of all data and to increase ease of processing for recipients of this market-based financial data.
Open Financial Exchange (OFX) XML Schema: XML specification for the electronic exchange of financial data between financial institutions, businesses, and consumers via the Internet. It is designed to support a wide range of financial activities including consumer and small business banking, consumer and small business bill payment, and investments transaction download, including stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.
Research Information eXchange Markup Language (RIXML): XML specification to tag any piece of research content in any form or media with enough detail for end users to be able to quickly search, sort, and filter aggregated research.
Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT): SWIFT Standards develops business standards to support transactions in the financial markets for payments, securities, treasury, and trade services. Their proprietary MT messages are complemented by new XML-based (MX) messages, which enable the transfer of richer data for more complex business transactions.
Food XML
Meat and Poultry XML (mpXML) Schema: XML specification for exchanging business information among all segments and entities in the meat and poultry supply and marketing chain.
Government XML
Election Markup Language (EML): XML specification for the structured interchange of data among hardware, software, and service providers who engage in any aspect of providing election or voter services to public or private organizations. The services performed for such elections include but are not limited to voter role/membership maintenance (new voter registration, membership and dues collection, change of address tracking, etc.), citizen/membership credentialing, redistricting, requests for absentee/expatriate ballots, election calendaring, logistics management (polling place management), election notification, ballot delivery and tabulation, election results reporting, and demographics.
National Information Exchange Model (NIEM): This has been developed through a partnership of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. It is designed to develop, disseminate, and support enterprise-wide information exchange standards and processes that enable jurisdictions to effectively share critical information in emergency situations, as well as support the day-to-day operations of agencies throughout the United States. NIEM builds on the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM).
Tax XML: This includes a vocabulary of terms and a repository of artifacts including XML templates, documents exchanged for tax compliance, best practices, guidelines, and recommendations for practical implementation. The intent is a common vocabulary that will allow participants to unambiguously identify the tax-related information exchanged within a particular business context.
Healthcare XML
Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) Operational Data Model (ODM): XML specification that is a vendor-neutral, platform-independent format for interchange and archive of data collected in clinical trials. The model represents study metadata, data, and administrative data associated with a clinical trial. Only the information that needs to be shared among different software systems during a trial or archived after a trial is included in the model.
Health Level 7 (HL7) Healthcare XML Format: XML specification for the exchange of clinical data and information. The purpose of the exchange of clinical data includes, but is not limited to, provision of clinical care, support of clinical and administrative research, execution of automated transaction-oriented decision logic (medical logic modules), support of outcomes research, support of clinical trials, and support of data reporting to government and other authorized third parties.
Human Resources (HR) XML
HR-XML: XML specification designed to enable e-business and the automation of human-resources related data exchanges.
Instruments XML
Instrument Markup Language (IML): XML specification that applies to virtually any kind of instrument that can be controlled by a computer. The approach to instrument description and control apply to many domains, from medical instruments (e.g., microscopes) to printing presses to machine assembly lines. The concepts behind IML apply equally well to the description and control of instruments in general.
Insurance XML
ACORD XML for Life Insurance: XML specification based on the ACORD Life Data Model.
ACORD XML for Property and Casualty Insurance: XML specification that addresses real-time requirement by defining property and casualty transactions that include both request and response messages for personal lines, commercial lines, specialty lines, surety, claims, and accounting transactions.
ACORD XML for Reinsurance and Large Commercial: XML specification that addresses real-time requirements by defining business transactions that include both request and response messages for Personal Lines, Commercial Lines, Specialty Lines, Surety, Claims, and Accounting transactions.
Legal XML
Global Justice XML Data Model (Global JXDM): XML standards that enable the justice and public safety community to effectively share information at all levels—laying the foundation for local, state, and national justice interoperability.
LegalXML eContracts: Open XML standards for the markup of contract documents to enable the efficient creation, maintenance, management, exchange, and publication of contract documents and contract terms.
LegalXML Electronic Court Filing: XML standards to create legal documents and transmit legal documents from an attorney, party, or self-represented litigant to a court, from a court to an attorney, from a party or self-represented litigant to another court, and from an attorney or other user to another attorney or other user of legal documents.
LegalXML eNotary: An agreed set of technical requirements to govern self-proving electronic legal information.
LegalXML Integrated Justice: XML standards for exchanging data among justice system branches and agencies.
LegalXML Legal Transcripts: XML standards for the syntax to represent legal transcript documents either as stand-alone structured content or as part of other legal records.
LegalXML Legislative Documents: XML standards for the markup of legislative documents and a system of simple citation capability for nonlegislative documents (e.g., newspaper articles). The primary goal is to allow the public to more easily participate in the democratic process by creating a more open, accessible, easier to parse, research, and reference legislative documents.
LegalXML Online Dispute Resolution (OdrXML): XML standard for the markup of information and documents used in online dispute resolution systems. The primary goal is to allow the public to gain standardized access to justice through private and government-sponsored dispute resolution systems.
LegalXML Subscriber Data Handover Interface (SDHI): XML standards for the production of consistent Subscriber Data Handover Interface (SDHI) by telecommunications or Internet service providers, concerning a subscriber or communications identifier (e.g., a telephone number) in response to an XML-structured request that includes, when necessary, authorization from a judicial, public safety, or law enforcement authority.
Manufacturing XML
papiNet: The papiNet standard is a set of XML message standards for the paper and forest industry. papiNet provides a common messaging interface so that companies will no longer need to negotiate and agree on data definitions and formats with each trading partner, a costly and arduous task. The papiNet standards are compatible with other important open standards like ebXML.
Planning and Scheduling Language on XML Specification (PSLX): The PSLX specification is a set of XML message standards for information about planning and scheduling in manufacturing industries.
Production Planning and Scheduling (PPS): The specification of common object models and corresponding XML schemas for production planning and scheduling software, which can communicate with each other to establish collaborative planning and scheduling on intra and/or inter-enterprises in manufacturing industries.
News XML
News Industry Text Format (NITF): XML specification for the content and structure of news articles. NITF differs from NewsML in that there is no concept in NewsML of a paragraph or subheadline. Also, there is no concept in NITF of a sidebar or alternative translations of the same document. For text stories, the International Press Telecommunications Council recommends the NITF.
NewsML: XML specification for encoding for news that is intended to be used for the creation, transfer, and delivery of news. NewsML is media independent and allows equally for the representation of the evening TV news and a simple textual story.
Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Markup (PRISM): XML metadata vocabulary for managing, postprocessing, multipurposing, and aggregating publishing content for magazine and journal publishing.
SportsML: XML specification for the interchange of sports data.
Oil and gas XML
Petroleium Industry Data Exchange (PIDX) standards: PIDX has developed and published several XML specifications that support automation of various aspects of the oil and gas supply chain. PIDX also developed a library of EDI X12 and FTP standards that are used to support oil and gas business.
Photo XML
Common Picture eXchange environment (CPXe): XML specification that enables the transmission of digital pictures and order and commerce information between digital cameras, PCs, desktop software, Internet services, photo kiosks, digital mini-labs, and photofinishers, regardless of the type of digital camera, device, PC brand, operating system, or photofinishing equipment used by service providers. By incorporating CPXe, photographic device and software vendors give their customers easy connection to a range of digital photography services.
Physics XML
Common Data Format Markup Language (CDFML): XML specification that is a self-describing data abstraction for the storage and manipulation of multidimensional data in a discipline-independent fashion.
Publishing XML
DocBook: XML/SGML vocabulary particularly well suited to books and papers about computer hardware and software (though it is by no means limited to these applications).
PROSE/XML: XML specification intended to be a standardized method for publishers to communicate job specifications to commercial printers. In as far as it enforces certain formats for its data, and thereby standardizes the “look” of the data, the PROSE/XML specification rarely defines its content data values. It is left up to the trading partners to determine the proper values for the content data transmitted via the PROSE/XML specification.
Shipment and Logistics Specification (SnL): XML message specification for efficient communication among those providing delivery instructions, transportation planning, and distribution services for shipment of printed product. SnL is made up of a family of related specifications. These specifications include shipment plans, shipment notifications, print order messages, and goods receipt messages.
XML Book Industry Transaction Standards (XBITS): This is a working group of IDEAlliance and a Book Industry Study Group (BISG)/ Book Industry Standards and Communications (BISAC) publisher and manufacturer committee that is designing standard XML transactions to facilitate bidirectional electronic data exchanges between publishers, printers, paper mills, and component vendors.
Real estate XML
Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO): XML specification for commercial mortgage origination data that provides both the content and format for borrowers and mortgage bankers to transmit data to lenders.
Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS): XML specification for exchanging real estate transaction information.
Telecommunications XML
Parlay X Web services: The Parlay application programming interfaces (APIs) are designed to enable creation of telephony applications as well as to “telecom-enable” IT applications. The Parlay X Web services are intended to stimulate the development of next-generation network applications by IT developers who are not necessarily experts in telephony or telecommunications.
Telecommunications Interchange Markup (TIM): XML specification for describing the structure of telecommunications and other technical documents.
Travel XML
The OpenTravel Alliance (OTA): XML specification that serves as a common language for travel-related terminology and a mechanism for promoting the exchange of information across all travel industry segments.