The Object Management Group Inc. (OMG) and the Meta Data Coalition (MDC) on Monday merged and will combine efforts to further a data warehousing standard for use of meta data. Specifically, the new organization will combine OMG's Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM) and the Open Information Model (OIM) from the Meta Data Coalition.
"We've been working together for the past year and a half, and it became clear that the market fragmentation for having two data warehousing standards was not a good thing. And since we had more momentum, they are going to join us and work to further our efforts" said Bill Hoffman, president and COO of Needham, Mass.-based OMG.
The combined efforts will greatly facilitate the creation of a single meta data interoperability standard and thus increase the likelihood that it will be adopted and implemented, according to Mike Schiff, director of data warehousing strategies at analysis firm Current Analysis Inc., in Sterling, Va. Meta data is information about the origin of data in a warehouse and is considered crucial to warehouse deployment and operations.
"Before either the OMG or MDC had a standard, there were literally dozens of standards, so it was good when we were down to just two. Now we actually have a shot at having just one standard," Schiff said.
As a result of the merger, MDC will cease operation and begin working toward OMG's standards.
OMG's CWM builds on various standards, including OMG's Unified Modeling Language (UML), XML Meta data Interchange (XMI), and Meta Object Facility (MOF).
But all is not lost from the MDC's efforts. Hoffman said that the two standards will be integrated into a single specification, to be issued by OMC as the next CWM model. A single standard will allow users to exchange meta data between different products from different vendors more easily.
"The resulting specification will be the best of both worlds," Schiff said.
Founded in 1995, the Meta Data Coalition is a nonprofit consortium of 50 vendors and end-users, including BMC Software Inc., Informatica Corp., Computer Associates International Inc., NCR Corp., Microsoft Corp., and SAS Institute Inc., and the goal is to provide a tactical solution for meta data exchange. MDC developed the OIM, a technology-neutral and vendor-independent meta data standard that features the Meta Data Interchange Specification (MDIS) and the OIM as originally submitted by Microsoft.
Since the OIM 1.0 became available in July 1999, work has been under way to align the standard with the CWM developed by OMG.