Registrars of terminology (was Re: Are we losing out because ofgrammars?)

[Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com>]

Michael Fitzgerald:

> Unfortunately it is easier to reinvent a new term than to find out what
> everybody (or anybody) else has used to define a similar term. But consider
> efforts by the UN and D&B to produce Standard Products and Services
> Classification (SPSC) [*] to classify just about any product or service
> available worldwide. Certain elements in ebXML and cXML documents, e.g.,
> require (I don't say enforce) UN/SPSC content. Someday common XML elements
> may be codified in a similar way (notice I am not even mentioning the word
> *semantics* %^}).

Thanks for pointing this out.  It is a *very* important issue.  I'd also
like to note that thsnks to Martin Bryan's mention that ISO TC 541 had
emerged from its funk, I re-discovered the ISO Basic Semantic Registry
BSR effort and there are some preliminary goods we should all be considering.

The U.S. Government GILS project has converted the first batch (a few
thousand entries) of the BSR to RDF schema and XML schema.  See

http://www.gils.net/rdf/
http://www.gils.net/xml/bsr.xsd

I hope it's not a problem if they're "Slashdotted".

Nothing vertical to any industry yet, but it's a start.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com               +1 303 583 9900 x 101
Fourthought, Inc.                         http://Fourthought.com
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