Page 69 - GAO-02-327 Electronic Government: Challenges to Effective Adoption of the Extensible Markup Language

Glossary Glossary

Application Programming The interface between the application software and the application
Interface platform (i.e., operating system), across which all services are provided.

Attribute A property associated with a specific data element in an XML document.

Business Process A collection of related, structured activities—a chain of events—that
produce a specific service or product for a particular customer or
customers.

Collaboration Protocol Information that identifies or describes the specific collaboration protocol
Agreement that two (or more) parties have agreed to use.

Collaboration Protocol Information about a party that describes one or more business processes
Profile and associated protocols that the party supports for purposes of
collaboration.

Data Type A description of the attributes of a specific set of data, such as whether it
represents integers or text strings.

Document Type Definition A file that describes the structure of XML documents and defines how
(DTD) markup tags should be interpreted. A DTD can be used to automatically
interpret multiple documents in a uniform way.

Electronic Business The exchange of information within or among enterprises by electronic
means for the purpose of conducting business transactions or other
related activities.

Electronic Commerce Business done electronically, including the sharing of standardized
unstructured or structured business information by any electronic means.

Electronic Data The automated exchange of predefined and structured business data
Interchange (EDI) among information systems of two or more organizations. Federal
government use of EDI is governed by Federal Information Processing
Standard 161-2.

Page 65 GAO-02-327 Electronic Government