Web Services Report
News for the connected enterprise
http://www.esj.com/webservices/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=91

OASIS Takes on New Standard to Improve Customer Data 

by Matt Migliore

12/21/2001 
OASIS, an XML-interoperability consortium, has taken over the development 
of a new open standard for defining customer associations. It is expected 
to be used in conjunction with the consortium’s existing standards for customer 
characteristics to bring a new dimension to customer relationship management. 

The new standard, CRML, was originally developed by MSI Business Solutions Pty. Ltd., 
and was released as a beta last week. MSI in turn submitted it to OASIS’ Customer 
Information Quality Technical Committee in an effort to bring it into the mainstream.

An XML-based vocabulary specification, CRML is designed to provide a common method 
for describing person-to-person, person-to-company and company-to-company 
relationships. 

"In order to achieve a 360-degree view of the customer, there needs to be a 
standard way of defining customer relationships," says Ram Kumar, chair of 
the OASIS CIQ Technical Committee. 

Kumar, who is MSI’s lead technologist and the writer of the CRML specification, 
says he is hoping to work with other standards bodies to help promote widespread 
adoption of CRML. He is currently talking to the governing body for ebXML -- 
an XML-based set of definitions for electronic transactions - and is hoping to 
initiate similar conversations with the committee for Universal Description, 
Discovery and Integration. 

With ebXML, Kumar says CRML creates a more powerful specification that can 
search not only on business entities, but also business relationships. In 
the framework of UDDI, he says CRML gives the directory system the capability 
to initiate relationships. 

According to Kumar, CRML goes a step farther than UDDI version two in terms 
of how it handles relationships. UDDI version two, which was just released 
as a beta in November, has been enhanced with new features for highlighting 
relationships between listings. Kumar describes these features as "base level,"
and says they merely help users find out if relationships exist, but offer 
nothing in terms of initiating them, which is what CRML adds to the equation.

CRML is based in part on two other standards also under development by 
OASIS, xCIL and xNAL, which define customer characteristics. xNAL is a 
global standard for name and address information, while xCIL is a standard 
method for describing other customer information, including telephone
and pager numbers, e-mail addresses and URLs. 

Although xCIL and xNAL are subsets of CRML, OASIS does not plan to merge 
the three specifications. By keeping them separate, OASIS expects CRML 
will be more likely to fit into ebXML, UDDI and possibly other specifications 
under development by the World Wide Web Consortium. As a unit, Kumar says 
xCIL, xNAL and CRML will give users of customer relationship management 
systems more flexibility in working customer data.

CRML is currently available for download at the OASIS Web site (www.oasis-open.org).

You can contact Matt about "OASIS Takes on New Standard to Improve 
Customer Data " at mmigliore@esj.com.