An Introduction to ISO 15926 November 2011 - iRINGToday

CHAPTER 2:
HISTORY OF ISO 15926
The ability to exchange digital information between computer programs probably became
an issue as soon as the second computer program was written. Software developers create
their applications independently and make individual pragmatic decisions on how to represent
data. As a result, users of the software can typically only open a data file by using the authoring
application—not a competitor’s application. In early computing, information exchange
between computer programs could only be done the hard way: by reading the output of one
application and manually rekeying the appropriate parts into another.
Over time, as software vendors responded to user’s needs, we have come to expect to be able
to move information from one system to another without having to completely rekey it. But
we still need to know a great deal about the computer systems and work processes involved if
we want the meaning, or semantics, of our information to be preserved throughout the exchange.
Today, at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century we are on the verge
of making the vision of open exchange of project information a reality. Although there have
been many business drivers pushing this, it has only become possible via the hard work of
many people and the convergence of the following four areas of study.
• How we use the Internet to find information.
• How we know and understand things.
• Open means of storing and exchanging data.
• The evolution of product information standards.
Figure 2.1 shows how these areas of study relate to ISO 15926.
CHAPTER 2
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