XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) has been formally presented to the Object Management Group (OMG) as a response to the groups’ request for a streaming metadata interchange format (SMIF). XMI was developed by Unisys with IBM as a partner (CI No 3442). It is designed to work closely with existing OMG standards, Meta Object Facility (MOF) and Unified Modeling Language (UML), to help object-oriented application developers manage a repository of programming objects distributed over a network. The idea is to let geographically dispersed programming teams work closely together and share complex tools. In the past, such developers had to use CORBA application programming interfaces to exchange metadata. SMIF is intended to give them the option of using a file or stream format instead. XMI is one of three proposals submitted for consideration as a possible SMIF. The others are CDIF, presented by Fujitsu and Softeam, and the Universal Object Language (UOL), a hybrid of UML and Eiffel designed to make metadata human-readable for the benefit of visually impaired programmers, for example. Sridhar Iyengar, who led the Unisys development effort, is confident XMI will prevail over its rivals. Interestingly enough Iyengar is also chair of the OMG committee charged with voting on SMIF. How does he avoid the appearance of conflict of interest? I have been very careful, he says, whenever Unisys is presenting I have assigned the chair to someone else. Whenever there is any discussion on the proposal that Unisys has submitted, I fade into the background. What Iyengar won’t divulge, however, is whether, as chair, he casts the deciding vote.
