Business to business interoperability: A current review of XML data integration standards

Despite the dawn of the XML era, semantic interoperability issues still remain unsolved. As various initiatives trying to address how the underlying business information should be modelled, named and structured are being realised throughout the world, the importance of moving towards a holistic approach in eBusiness magnifies. In this paper, an attempt to clarify between the standards prevailing in the area is performed and the XML Data Standards providing generic XML Schemas are presented. Based on this "XML Data Standards Map", a multi-faceted classification mechanism is proposed, leading to an extensible taxonomy of standards. A set of facets is analyzed for each standard, allowing for their classification based on their scope, completeness, compatibility with other standards, openness, ability to modify the schemas and maturity, to name a few. Through populating and querying this multi-faceted classification, a common understanding of Data Integration Standards can be ensured and the choice of a standard according to the requirements of each business can be systematically addressed. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.