2008-02-15: Genericode is now an OASIS committee specification (CS). The following CS 1.0 documents are available from the OASIS web site (links to that site below):
Genericode Specification: PDF, ODF (for OpenOffice, etc.), HTML. Note that the HTML version is not as well formatted as the other versions.
Genericode Resources and Namespaces: RDDL (= HTML + embedded RDF). You can read this in your normal Web browser, but it also contains embedded machine-readable information.
W3C XML namespace Schema (used by main Schema)
Genericode started as a project to define a standard format for defining code lists (also known as enumerations or controlled vocabularies). Code lists occur throughout all parts of IT (information technology), but there isn't a single standard way to manage them. This means that each new standards effort creates its own new solution, and this has caused a balkanization of the management of code lists.
Genericode aims to provide the following:
a standard model and XML representation for the contents of a code list;
a standard model and XML representation for data associated with items in a code list;
a standard model and XML representation for how new code lists are derived from existing code lists.
This last point distinguishes genericode from solutions which provide no more than a static snapshot of the contents of a particular version of a code list. genericode not only provides a representation of the items in a code list, it also provides an audit trail for how that code list is related to previous versions of the code list, or to other code lists. This simplifies the effort of understanding how a new code list version differs from the previous version, and simplifies the effort in calculating the impact of the change on existing systems and processes.
At present, the details of genericode are contained in the following. Further documentation will be listed here as it is produced.
New York XML SIG presentation: May 2007
Adobe Acrobat format (.pdf, 368K)
OASIS Code List Representation Requirements, version 1.01, December 2006
Adobe Acrobat format (.pdf, 204K)
OASIS Symposium presentation: April 2005
Adobe Acrobat format (.pdf, 677K)
XML 2004 presentation: November 2004
Adobe Acrobat format (.pdf, 2.7M)
XML 2004 conference paper: November 2004
This is more detailed than the presentations. See XML 2004 proceedings. This was the original genericode proposal. It is still very relevant to genericode 1.0, but contains some features which were removed from genericode 1.0 to speed up the standardisation process; those features may return in a later version of genericode.
The OASIS Code List Representation TC is now working on a standardised version of genericode. Committee Specification 1.0 of OASIS genericode includes the static representation parts of the original genericode proposal. A later version may add the parts relating to derivation of new code lists from existing code lists.
The OASIS Code List Representation TC also has an area on the OASIS Wiki, which includes a list of known implementations of genericode (including software).
Genericode is in use by:
UBL (Universal Business Language) – http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ubl
FpML (Financial Products Markup Language) – http://www.fpml.org/
and others.
Nothing, it's free to use.
Contact abcoates@londata.com if you have questions or comments.
The genericode Web site is sponsored by Londata Limited, a UK company.