At 11:47 AM +1000 4/22/05, Renato Iannella wrote:
>Hi all - I apologise if this issue has already been raised and discussed,
>but I am slightly confused as to the scope of CAP versus EDXL within the
>context of this TC?
Renato -
CAP came first and focused on alerting/eventing/attention-management
applications. EDXL was a follow-on initiative to create an
integrating framework for a wide range of emergency data exchange
standards to support operations, logistics, planning and finance.
(The first instance of EDXL is set to be a common routing-assertion
element that can be used to envelop other kinds of XML documents
including CAP messages... but that's just one component, not the
whole idea.)
The Technical Committee's plan has been to continue to refine the
existing CAP 1.0 spec, which is already in use in a variety of
systems and addresses a number of immediate needs, though one or more
sub-versions (CAP 1.1 being in work right now)... while at the same
time setting up the broader EDXL framework... and then to bring CAP
into that larger framework with CAP 2.0 at some point in the future.
So... CAP is a particular document for a narrow set of
applications... while EDXL was conceived as a much broader framework
for integrating numerous documents and application types.
Perhaps an even narrower distinction is between the EDXL and the U.S.
National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), which is based on the
U.S. Global Justice XML Data Model. Other folks here can speak to
that relationship better than I can, but I will point out that OASIS
operates on an international basis, whereas the NIEM is a U.S.
government initiative... and also that, again, EDXL was launched
prior to the announcement of NIEM, so some degree of overlap is not
necessarily surprising.
A few enterprising journalists have characterized the EDXL/NIEM
relationship vividly as "dueling XML efforts," but I think that's a
superficial and flawed characterization. Everyone involved is
working together toward shared goals, and there's certainly plenty of
work to go around.
Hope that helps!
- Art
