XML Registry Team Meeting Notes

As part of the XML CoP meeting held on October 19, 2004, a break-out session was held with over 20 people interested in XML and related Registry issues. I encouraged the group to discuss what they might need from each other and how to support the XML efforts across government and related organizations.

Some of the topics discussed were:

- Information sharing about existing registries and changes in them that
are going on (e.g. Version 5.0 of the DoD Registry)
- The management of semantic content in data and the role of registries
- Related standards for registries and other technologies that need to be considered
- Interoperability among registries and the needed policy, cooperation and coordination

The group generally agreed that a high priority task is to define a set of use cases for registries and publish it. An early product should be a top-level list in summary form of the most-needed use cases. Following might be a more in-depth analysis and description of some of the cases as
needed.

There is also a need to share lessons learned among organizations which have done implementations or pilots. Many agencies are approaching the implementation stage and sharing experiences would be extremely valuable at this point. At least one agency, for instance, is about to complete a features table comparing a number of different registries as part of their selection process.

To begin with, the group will use the XML Registry - Repository mailing list at NIST for communication. xml-gov-reg@nist.gov I will subscribe those who were at the meeting in the list shortly, and others who wish to subscribe should send me an email at roy.morgan@nist.gov

Roy Morgan
National Institute of Standards and Technology