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ANSI X12 - A protocol from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for electronic data interchange (EDI). EDIFACT merged with ANSI X12 in 1997. See EDI, EDIFACT, and http://www.x12.org/
DAML (DARPA Agent Markup Language) - A language, built on XML and RDF, for the expression of ontologies. The latest version incorporates OIL and is called DAML+OIL. DAML+OIL together are the basis of OWL, and are expected to be superceded by OWL when it is is formally accepted. See DARPA, XML, RDF, OIL, OWL, and http://www.daml.org.
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) -See DAML and http://www.darpa.mil.
Data Dictionary -A collection of descriptions of the entities in a data model or schema. Data Dictionaries are usually written in natural language, as opposed to rationalizations.
DCMI (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative) - An open forum engaged in the development of interoperable online metadata standards. See Metadata and http://dublincore.org.
DTD (Document Type Definition) - A specific language for describing the structure of a class of structured documents, such as SGML of XML documents – now superceded by XML Schema. See SGML, and XML
EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) - The term used for information systems that bind together many applications within an enterprise, typically dealing with the scheduling and control of flow of information between them. Often classified as middleware.
EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) - The electronic interchange of business transactions between organizations according to a specific pre-defined standard. Generally uses a flat file structure. See ANSI X12, and EDIFACT.
EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange for Administration Commerce and Transport) - A standard for EDI. See EDI, ANSI X12, http://www.edifact-wg.org and http://www.xml-edifact.org/.
ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram) – A data modeling technique used primarily in database design. It models entities, their relationships, and the cardinalities of those relationships.
Knowledge Representation – The study of the representation of knowledge in machine understandable form. See Ontology and http://www.jfsowa.com/.
Mapping – The process of associating elements of one set with elements of another set, or the set of associations that come out of such a process. Often refers to the formally described relationship between two schemas, or between a schema and a central model. See Rationalization.
Messaging - Creating, storing, exchanging, and managing data messages across a communications network. The two main messaging architectures are publish-subscribe and point-to-point.
Metadata - Data that describes other data. Often deals with the format or authorship of the underlying data. See Dublin Core and http://www.w3.org/Metadata/Activity.html.
MOF (Meta Object Facility) – A facility for the definition of modeling systems, to facilitate interoperability between them. See OMG, XMI, and http://www.omg.org/cwm/
Namespace - A way of qualifying element and attribute names used in XML documents. See XML, XML Schema, URI, and http://www.xmlinfo.com/namespaces/.
ODBMS (Object-Oriented Database Management System) - A DB Management System that supports data modeling and the creation of data in the form of objects.
OIL (Ontology Inference Language or the Ontology Interchange Layer) - A declarative ontology language built on RDF. Often used in conjunction with DAML, and called DAML+OIL. See DAML, DARPA, and http://www.ontoknowledge.org/oil/.
Ontology – Originally a term for the branch of philosophy concerned with defining what exists, this has been appropriated by the technical world to mean a conceptual representation of the entities, meanings, and relationships within a specific domain of knowledge. See RDF, W3C, Metadata, OIL, Semantic Web, DAML, OWL, and http://www.Ontology.org.
OMG (Object Management Group) – A consortium producing and maintaining important industry specifications, including CORBA, MOF, UML, and XMI. See MOF, UML, XMI, and http://www.omg.org
ORDBMS (Object-Relational Database Management System) - The result of object-oriented database concepts being superimposed on relational databases. See RDBMS and ODBMS.
OWL (Ontology Web Language) – The ontology language, built on RDF and RDFS, and inspired by DAML+OIL that is currently being developed by the W3C Web Ontology working group. See W3C, DAML, OIL, Ontology, and http://www.w3c.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/
Rationalization – The process of associating the entities of a data model or schema with an agreed upon ontology or language. Also refers to the results of such a process. See mapping.
RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) - A program that lets you create, update, and administer a relational database, usually by utilizing SQL statements and storing data in related tables.
RosettaNet - An organization set up by industry-leading technology companies to define a common set of standards for e-commerce communication in the high technology supply chain. See http://www.rosettanet.org.
Schema – The structure of a database, a collection of structured documents, or other data storage or transfer mechanism. A schema can expressed in a diagram form, such as UML or ERD, or in a text based form, such as XSD.
Semantic Web - A conceptual web built on top of the World Wide Web in which all identified resources will be machine-processable. See RDF, W3C, Metadata, OIL, Ontology, DAML, http://www.semanticweb.org/, and [Tim Berners-Lee’s Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web.
Semantics - The meaning of something, as opposed to the way it is expressed, which is its syntax. See Syntax, Semantic Web, and SWAG.
SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) - A standard constructed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for defining a text document’s format. It is a superset of the XML standard. See HTML and http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/SGML/.
SWAG (Semantic Web Agreement Group) - An organization aiming to further the development of the Semantic Web. See Semantic Web, Ontology, DAML, OIL, RDF, and http://swag.semanticweb.org/.
Syntax - The structure or form of something, as opposed to it’s meaning, which is its semantics. See Semantics.
Transformation - The conversion of structured data from one format to another. See XSLT.
UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration) - A standard for the registry of web services. See Web Services and http://www.uddi.org.
UML (Unified Modeling Language) – a standard diagrammatic language, defined by the OMG, for recording models. See XMI, OMG, MOF, and http://www.omg.org/technology/uml/index.htm.
W3C (The World Wide Web Consortium) - The international consortium spearheading open standardization, interoperability, and coordination efforts regarding the Internet and the Web. See http://www.w3.org.
Web Services – Functions or services available remotely over the Internet. Generally, they use SOAP as a transport mechanism, are defined in WSDL, and may be registered with UDDI. See SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI
WSDL (Web Services Description Language) – A language for the description of web services, see Web Services
XMI (XML Metadata Interchange) – An XML standard for the exchange of metadata. It was developed by the OMG for the serialization and exchange of UML and MOF. See OMG, UML, MOF, and http://www.omg.org/technology/xml/index.htm
XML (Extensible Markup Language) - A standard for formatting data. Standardized by the W3C, XML defines a Web site’s data elements by using a tree structure. See http://www.w3.org/XML/.
XML Schema - A specification for defining the content type of an XML document or file. See XML, XSLT, DTD, and http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema.
XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) - A language for expressing stylesheets. An XSL stylesheet describes how an XML document of a particular type should be displayed. Although XSL formally includes XSLT, XSL is used for primarily for describing how XML documents are to be presented, where XSLT has become the standard language for transforming XML documents. See XML, XSLT, and http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/.
XSLT (XML Stylesheet Language: Transformations) – Formally a part of XSL, and originally created for complex formatting tasks, XSLT has become the standard language for transforming XML documents. See XML, XSLT, and http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt.
UML (Unified Modeling Language) - A graphical methodology language for software development projects. See http://www.omg.org/technology/uml/.
URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) - Short strings that identify resources. See http://www.w3.org/Addressing/.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator) – Strings that identify the precise location of a file on the Internet. See http://www.w3.org/Addressing/.
URN (Uniform Resource Name) - A persistent identifier for an information resource. See http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/urn-charter.html.