At the previous conference in Boston in July, the workshop on Measurement of Quality of
Digital Information had identified a set of requirements for management of heterogeneous
information. These requirements are described in The Open Group Business
Scenario: Measurement of Quality of Digital Information, which had been published
prior to the meeting in New Orleans.
The purpose of the meeting in New Orleans was to:
- Validate those requirements
- Develop an understanding of relevant standards and technology
- Consider whether it would be appropriate for The Open Group to undertake a program of
work in the area of Holistic Information Management and, if so:
- Outline the scope of that work
The meeting, which included a joint session with The Open Group Messaging Forum,
concluded that the requirements expressed in the Business Scenario are valid, with some
detailed refinements and provisos. These include, in particular, special conditions that
apply to email, which is one of the most important - if not the most important - forms of
information encountrered in corporations today.
The meeting undertook a broad survey of information management standards and
technology, and focused in detail on one particular standard, the Universal Data
Element Framework (UDEF). If today's information management technology is to improve
to meet cutomers' aspirations, it must develop at the semantic, as opposed to the
syntactic level. But automatic semantic analysis through machine intelligence is not yet
practical - and indeed may not be achievable in the foreseeable future. The semantic
component must therefore consist of metadata that is assigned largely through human
agency. A standard framework for that metadata is essential for consistent processing of
information by information management software, and for interoperability between different
information management products. The UDEF can provide the basis for such a framework. Ron
Schuldt of Lockheed Martin gave an excellent presentation on UDEF.
There are currently some very exciting developments in information management. Search
engine technology developed for, and dramatically successful on, the World-Wide Web is
being applied to the personal computing environment and to the corporate environment.
(This idea is not new, but its commercial window of opportunity may now be opening.)
Analysis tools are appearing - though their strength is currently perhaps more in the area
of graphical presentation than in the area of human-like understanding of the information.
And there is at least one radical proposal for an intelligent filestore that will put
information management capabilities into the operating system.
It is important to understand and monitor these developments. The meeting did not
however identify specific standards, profiles, or codes of practice that it would be
appropriate for The Open Group to produce. A real issue has been identified, but the time
for standardization may not yet have come.
