An open-standards group has created a framework that could facilitate the global exchange of information among organizations. The naming system could benefit a wide range of disciplines, from disaster response to medical research.

The Open Group’s Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF) has the potential to hasten information exchange by indexing the world’s datasets — from e-commerce services to government registries and medical research databases — in one universally shared semantic repository.

And evidence shows that UDEF works. In October 2005, Open Group officials demonstrated the framework for members of the information technology community.

The demonstration applied UDEF to a disaster response situation. In the scenario, an imaginary emergency response team wanted information about the availability of 9-volt batteries in a retailer’s inventory database. An address repository managed by the U.S. Postal Service allowed the workers to determine the response team’s location in relation to manufacturers and retailers. Access to Office Depot’s database allowed the hypothetical workers to quickly check the batteries’ inventory status. Finally, MapQuest let users plot driving routes to stores that had batteries available.

Ron Schuldt, chairman of the Open Group UDEF Forum, said the framework’s coding provides a semantic link among disparate datasets. “If the UDEF is adopted on a global scale, enterprises will be able to reduce the costs of building and maintaining interfaces between enterprise applications,” said Schuldt, who is also a senior staff systems architect at Lockheed Martin Enterprise Information Systems.

UDEF provides a rigorous rules-based naming system. It involves mapping a data descriptor to a structured identifier that resembles the 123.123.123.123 format used in IP addresses. Schuldt simplified the idea by likening it to any basic classification system. “You go into a library to find a book, and whether you know it or not, the Dewey Decimal System is behind the scenes,” he said.

The UDEF framework expands on traditional e-commerce by providing a means to link all components — bank accounts, inventories and other automated systems — to one central semantic hub called the Global UDEF Registry.

The disaster response demonstration provided only a glimpse of UDEF’s possibilities. The emergency workers had access to the phone numbers of local stores in the test, but a real-world deployment could allow users to place items on hold or ship them. Adding radio frequency identification technology (RFID) could also help track supplies.

The catalyst for the UDEF movement has been the increasing push for semantic interoperability. “The timing, I think, is right [for] the whole notion of getting one’s arms around the semantics,” Schuldt said. “You hear at the [World Wide Web Consortium] level the words ‘Semantic Web.’ You go to many different conferences on interoperability, and they all conclude that the piece that’s missing is dealing with the semantics. If you went to conferences five years ago, you wouldn’t hear that.”