Page 57 - GAO-02-327 Electronic Government: Challenges to Effective Adoption of the Extensible Markup Language

Chapter 3: The Federal Government Faces
Challenges in Realizing XML’s Full Potential

structures found in the registry because doing so would save costs and
also bring about interoperability with other existing systems. The more
widely specific data elements and structures were used, the closer they
would come to becoming de facto standards.

A centralized registry would not necessarily include only a single option to
address a specific business need. Overlapping variants of some types of
tags, definitions, and data structures may be needed to address the needs
of different communities. For example, a standard schema for military
purchase orders might differ from a purchase order schema shared by a
group of civilian agencies. Further, a government registry could link to a
number of standard commercial variants defined for other communities of
interest that may contain additional purchase order schemas used by
specific industries. The chemical and automotive industries, for example,
may use schemas that vary from each other as well as from the standard
government version. A registry would provide access and information
about all relevant predefined data definitions and structures, which would
allow developers to make decisions about the extent they needed to
adhere strictly to industry standards, government standards, or some
combination. Figure 7 summarizes how an XML developer could
hypothetically use an XML registry.

Page 53 GAO-02-327 Electronic Government