Members Approve Content Assembly Mechanism (CAM) 1.1 as OASIS Standard
New standard lays foundation for automated information integration
Boston, MA, USA; 19 June 2007 — OASIS, the international standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved the Content Assembly Mechanism (CAM) version 1.1 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. CAM provides an open, XML-based system for using business rules to define, validate, and compose specific business documents from generalized schema elements and structures. CAM also provides the foundation for creating industry libraries and dictionaries of schema elements and business document structures to support business process needs.
"CAM has been described as a Swiss army knife for XML structures," said David Webber, chair of the OASIS Content Assembly Mechanism (CAM) Technical Committee. "That’s because CAM addresses the three issues that are crucial for automated information integration. It delivers the capability to design transactions consistently, to document their usage clearly, and to drive software that can apply rules and test information content correctly."
CAM can be used wherever manipulation or validation of information content structures is required. The most widely used application is the validation of content passing through a messaging system, where CAM ensures that the information received is compatible with the supported business systems. CAM can also direct the creation or processing of transactions in a business process engine or be deployed as a Web service to allow trading partners to pre-validate XML instances before using them in message exchanges.
"Before a Web service can exchange XML data between applications, the information usually needs to be validated and transformed," explained Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "CAM offers a new way to accomplish this by using specialized templates that allow contextual business rules to be applied to any XML structure. These business rules can be used to validate the structure or to transform XML data to fit a specified form."
The CAM OASIS Standard was developed by representatives of AmberPoint, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Sun Microsystems, and others.
The CAM OASIS Standard and the archives of the OASIS CAM Technical Committee work are publicly accessible. OASIS hosts the cam-dev mailing list for exchanging information on implementing the standard.
Additional information:
CAM 1.1 OASIS Standard: http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/index.php#camv1.1
OASIS CAM Technical Committee: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/cam/
CAM FAQ: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/cam/faq.php
OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. http://www.oasis-open.org
Press contact: Carol Geyer OASIS Director of Communications carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209 (office) +1.941.284.0403 (mobile)