Open Standards
Breaking down the barriers

Thursday 19^th September 2002 in the Alexander Fleming Building
at Imperial College, London

Many different data formats, protocols and proprietary systems are used by the various software packages for survey research. The resulting barriers to the free movement of data and information have historically been difficult and expensive to overcome.

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a generic language for representing complex data structures as linear (serialised) text and is therefore of crucial importance. XML is supported by many tools and systems for defining standard structures, for manipulating them into and out of program code, and for transforming them into other forms. However, this does not solve the problem of deciding what is a useful structure for a particular application, nor of defining the meaning of the various components – we still need to define standards for that.

Over the past few years, new standards for data interchange have been defined, triple s for example. Some are now well established and others are emerging in the key areas. Can one have too many standards?

This conference set out to establish the current situation and explore the possibilities for the future. Some papers discussed technical issues of tools and specific proposals for standards, but the fiscal and quality benefits of standardisation were also be covered.

Programme
 

Title and Author(s)	Downloads
Click on Title to view the Abstract	Presentation as PowerPoint slides	Full paper as Word document
Tempus fugit or Did I really say that? Peter Wills – Mercator Research Group	(580Kb)
XML, and the design of Standards Andrew Westlake – Survey & Statistical Computing & Chris Nelson – Dimension EDI	(413Kb)	(244Kb)
The AskML and TabsML Standards Projects Keith Hughes – Merlinco & Ed Ross – Consultant	(315Kb)	(35Kb)
Non-standard Standards: Blaise, Dimensions and Triple-S: Three data models compared on their potential for independently written software Ed Ross – Consultant & Brian Atkinson – ATP	(563Kb)	(55Kb)
The Triple-S Standard Geoff Wright – Computable Functions	(105Kb)	(35Kb)
SuML: Implementation of a Multi-domain Markup Language Syed Zia, Matt Barclay & Bill Lober – University of Washington	(162Kb)	(395Kb)
Implementation of Standard by a Software House – Case Study Birju Jani & Bill Cripe – CfMc	(144Kb)
An Open and Shut Case; Using Triple-S with the TGI – Case Study Mark Pietronave, Marc van Lohuizen – BMRB, & Steve Jenkins – Mercator Research Group	(290Kb)	(199Kb)

A map of the location is available, as are details and a campus map for Imperial College.

Details of the facilities for Exhibitors are available on our Exhibitors page.