It's all semantics: A glossary of machine-to-machine communications

Key terms elucidate the National Information Exchange Model and semantics

• By John Moore
• Mar 22, 2011

Data component: The basic building block of NIEM -- could represent a person, an organization, etc.

Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM): A guide for information exchange in the justice and public safety sectors; NIEM precursor.

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Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPD): The instructions for assembling a NIEM exchange -- based on a subset of a reference schema.

Naming and Design Rules (NDR): A set of rules for promoting consistent NIEM schema development. Can be used to layer an incremental semantics on top of base XML.

Reference schemas: The unabridged set of data components within a NIEM slice of NIEM -- justice, for example.

Resource Description Framework (RDF): As a key semantic Web standard, RDF describes resources -- documents, people, concepts, etc. -- in a machine-readable way.

Semantic Web: A common framework that seeks to improve access to data by making it easier for machines to interpret.

Web Ontology Language (OWL): A Semantic Web standard that goes beyond RDF, boosting the ability of computers to interpret content.