This document discusses international content standards developed by OASIS and LISA to remove communication barriers. OASIS is an international non-profit consortium with over 650 members and 70 technical committees producing open standards. Key OASIS standards discussed include DocBook for structured document authoring, DITA for modular topic-based information, CMIS for content management interoperability, and XLIFF for localization interchange. The document emphasizes that open standards must be publicly available, stable, published with open rules and processes, and have explicit intellectual property terms.

1. Removing Communication
Barriers:
International Content
Standards at LISA & OASIS
Dr. Arle Lommel, LISA
arle@lisa.org
James Bryce Clark, OASIS
jamie.clark@oasis-open.org
February 10, 2011

11. ● OASIS is a member-led, “The largest
international non-profit standards group for
standards consortium for electronic commerce
global e-business & the on the Web.”
information economy
● Over 650 members
● Over 70 technical
committees producing
royalty-free and RAND
standards
Best-known works include: OpenDocument Format, CMIS and DITA (documents);
SAML, XACML, KMIP, IMI, ID-Cloud and WS-Security (identity & security);
BPEL, UDDI, WS-RM and the SOA Reference Model (SOA & web services);
CAP, UBL & ebXML (e-government)

12. OASIS interoperates with the world
 Cooperation, liaison and harmonization with other standards
organizations is a first-class OASIS priority
 Formal working relationships with:
 ISO, IEC, ITU, UN-ECE MoU for E-Business
 ISO/IEC JTC1 SC34, SC38; ISO TCs 154, 215, ITU-T SG 17
 IPTC, OECD, SWIFT, UPU, World Bank
 Asia PKI, Changfeng (Beijing), CESI, EA-ECA, Korean NIA,
CEN/ISSS, European ICTSB, ETSI, PSLX, Standards-AU
 ABA, ACORD, AIAG, CalConnect, HL7, MBAA, NAESB, LRC,
InfoCard/OpenID, Kantara/Liberty, LISA, OAGi, OGC, OMA,
OMG, RosettaNet/UCC, W3C, WS-I

14. What is a “Standard”?
Standard
Anything on which a few vendors agree?
Well, no. An open standard is:
 Publicly available
 Stable, persistent versions
 Published rules
 Open process (public comments, archives,
no NDAs)
 Explicit, disclosed, finite IPR terms
Anything else is proprietary: this is a
regulatory policy distinction, not a pejorative.

15. How open standards cause
interoperability & convergence
 Standards are modular
 Users and developers test whether the
method can be used in conjunction with other
specifications
 Modular methods can be phased into legacy
architectures
 Modular methods are less
vulnerable to vendor lock-in
 No-one uses just ONE
standard

16. OASIS DocBook
Since 1998; latest: v5.0 (2009)
Workspace: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/docbook
Spec: http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/index.php#docbook
Structured document authoring using XML or
SGML, starting with software and hardware
technical documentation use cases.
From Markup to publishing-specific functionality
• inline graphics
• title and subtitle handling
• bibliographies, defined terms, lists and cross
references
• delimiters for blocks of texts, subjects, ancillary
matter

17. OASIS DITA
Darwin Information Typing Architecture
Since 2004; Latest = v5.0 (2009)
Workspace: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita
Specification: http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/index.php#ditav1.2
XML schemas for modular, topic-based information
presentation. Extensible by specialization, where new,
supplemental semantic structures, document types and
data types can be added for specific topics. Current DITA
vocabulary specializations include learning & training
content, pharmaceutical content, web content,
semiconductor design content, and translation content.
Documents atomize semantically, into topics and
maps, associated with metadata, vocabularies and
other re-useable bytes; renditions of the material may
vary widely from use to use and processor to
processor.

18. OASIS CMIS
Content Management Interoperability Services
Since 2008; Latest = v1.0 (2010)
Workspace: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/cmis
Specification: http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/index.php#cmisv1.0
CMIS provides a data exchange model, abstract
capabilities set and set of data bindings for Content
Management repositories/systems, to work with each
other and outside applications, to support aggregate
content use that leverages current repositories.
Chief use cases include portals and mashups that
consume content from multiple systems; searches
across repositories for re-use, records management
and audit purposes; and subscription & notification
services.

19. OASIS XLIFF
XML Localisation Interchange File Format
Since 2001; Latest = v1.2 (2008)
Workspace: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/xliff
Specification: http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/index.php#xliffv1.2
XLIFF is a set of XML vocabularies for standardized
interchange of localisable software, document-based
objects and related metadata between localization
tools..

20. OASIS OAXAL
Open Architecture for XML Authoring & Localization Ref. Model
Since 2008; Latest = v1.0 (2009)
Workspace: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/oaxal
Specification: http://www.oasis-
open.org/committees/download.php/35736/OASIS%20Open
%20Architecture%20for%20XML%20Authoring%20and
%20Localization%20Reference%20Model%20%28OAXAL%29.pdf
The Open Architecture for XML Authoring and
Localization Reference Model provides for an
integrated document creation and localization
environment, including planned support for W3C ITS,
LISA OSCAR xml:tm, LISA GMX, LISA TMX, Unicode
TR29, OASIS XLIFF, and various open standard XML
Vocabularies such as DITA, Docbook, XHTML, SVG
and ODF.

21. What should stakeholders do?
 Bring your use cases to the
standards table
 Be prepared to compromise
 If you can participate as an active
contributor, do so
 If you don’t have the bandwidth to
contribute actively, be a good
observer
 Understand the ground rules
 Expect conformance
 Be a good citizen

23. Questions?