XML Metadata Exchange / XMI for Not Yet Techies

XML Metadata Exchange / XMI is designed and created to allow the easy exchange of metadata (that is, data about data) between software program modeling tools and metadata repositories. The current version of XML Metadata Exchange / XMI is 2.0.

1. eXtensible Markup Language / XML

2. Universal Modeling Language / UML

3. Meta Object Facility / MOF

Metadata does seem like a strange concept, but you use it all the time. For example, you send an email to a friend. The "data" is the message -- "Hi Fred, lunch today is on me. Sam."

Metadata is ABOUT this message. It's just that you're used to it being in your mind instead of on paper or in a computer program.

For example, you -- Fred -- know certain things about Sam. He's a man, he's your good friend, he's 40 years old, he's married etc.

You could break this down into XML classes of the object "Sam" -- the Gender class = Male, Age class = 40 etc.

You know these things automatically but just the 3 letters "Sam" could mean a lot of different things. Maybe your boss is named Sam. So is your cousin's wife (short for Samantha) etc. So each one of these "Sam"s has its own set of classifications in your head, which is metadata that would be activated in your mind if you ever get an email from them.

So you know from context that the "Lunch is on me" Sam is different than the "The report is due Thursday" Sam and the "Thanksgiving is at our house this year" Sam.

But to anyone else, they're all the same. But using XML and XML Metadata Exchange / XMI, all of us could know the difference, at least in the defined categories. Your private email is not our concern, but information scattered throughout the World Wide Web is.

Therefore, it's important for XML that metadata be easily transferred and exchanged. XML Metadata Exchange / XMI  is a data exchange format specifying the creation of linear data from a Universal Modeling Language / UML program.

XML Metadata Exchange / XMI is a standard adopted by the Object Management Group / OMG in March 1999.

It has two major components:

1. XML DTD Production Rules for creating Document Type Definitions for XMI encoded metadata.

2. XML Document Production Rules for encoding data into an XML compatible format.

The XML Metadata Interchange Format (XMI) specifies an open information interchange model that is intended to give developers working with object technology the ability to exchange programming data over the Internet in a standardized way, thus bringing consistency and compatibility to applications created in collaborative environments. By establishing an industry standard for storing and sharing object programming information, development teams using various tools from multiple vendors can still collaborate on applications. The proposed standard will allow developers to leverage the web to exchange data between tools, applications, and repositories to create secure, distributed applications built in a team development environment.