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San Francisco, CA – August 16, 2005 – The Open
Group announced that it established a new Forum to focus
on developing the Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF)
and implementing a registry for it. The new Forum will be
known as the UDEF Forum. The UDEF Forum members will work
to establish it as a universally used system, and to set
up a registry that will hold UDEF descriptions and identifiers.
The UDEF is a classification system that allows semantic
indexing and classification of UDEF data, based on structured
unique identifiers. UDEF enables enterprises to categorize
their information in a standard and consistent way and reduce
cost and time associated with data transformations, resulting
in increased interoperability and improved agility of information
management.
“Making translations between different data description
standards can be very costly, “ said Dr. Chris Harding,
Director of the UDEF Forum. “The UDEF and its registry
will provide a simple, clear, and unambiguous standard classification
that will remove current industry confusion and provide significant
cost savings.”
“Once the UDEF open standard is adopted within enterprise
applications, it will provide a key semantics integration
enabler for any Service Oriented Architecture,” noted
Ron Schuldt, Senior Staff Systems Architect, Lockheed Martin
Corporation.
“This type of work is very important if we are to
ever achieve a high degree of interoperability at the data
level,” said Dave Chesebrough, President of the Association
for Enterprise Integration. “The ability to seamlessly
interchange semantically equivalent data provides a foundation
for comprehensive integration and subsequent business value.”
Developed by the US CALS ISG in the late 1980s and early
1990s, the UDEF provides a method of consistent classification
and categorization of data by assigning to every item of
data a structured indexing identifier, consisting of an
alphanumeric tag and a simple textual description. More
information can be found at: http://www.opengroup.org/udef.
The Open Group is a vendor-neutral and technology-neutral
consortium, which drives the creation of Boundaryless Information
Flow™ that will enable access to integrated information
within and between enterprises based on open standards
and global interoperability. The Open Group works with
customers, suppliers, consortia and other standard bodies.
Its role is to capture, understand and address current
and emerging requirements, establish policies and share
best practices; to facilitate interoperability, develop
consensus, and evolve and integrate specifications and
open source technologies; to offer a comprehensive set
of services to enhance the operational efficiency of consortia;
and to operate the industry’s premier certification
service. Further information on The Open Group can be found
at http://www.opengroup.org.
Note to editors: Boundaryless
Information Flow is a trademark of The Open Group.
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