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The mine action eXtensible Mark-Up Language (maXML) data sharing project began in 2001 as an effort to resolve some of the problems associated with the transfer of data between different mine action programmes and systems. The project was originally focused on providing a simple data transfer mechanism to support the South Eastern Europe Data Harmonization project. This project was organized as a cooperative effort between the member States of the International Trust Fund, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, the US Department of State and the Geneva Centre. Building and demonstrating a working pilot project based on maXML started with the design and development of the specification itself. This process can be compared to the development of a dictionary of mine action terms and there definitions. Development of the specification was accomplished over a period of approximately one year and was a cooperative effort based on input from a wide variety of management, technical and operational inputs. Once a basic maXML specification had been developed the next step in the project was to produce and field a practical field demonstration of the use of the specification to transfer data between systems in mine action. This portion of the project focused on the data transfers required to support the South Eastern Europe Data Harmonization project. This project was an attempt to bring together mine action data from the States of South Eastern Europe into a single regional data base. maXML was successfully used to increase the number of data elements being transferred among the member States from 7 to over 50. As a follow-up to this pilot project the maXML data specification has since been placed in service as the data transfer mechanism between the SWEDEC developed EOD IS-SURVEY handheld data collection system and IMSMA V3. maXML has also been incorporated into IMSMA V4 as a standard data export format. The maXML specification will serve as the basis for data transfers between different installations of IMSMA V4 and other external systems. Work on the maXML project is now being focused on an effort to refine the specification in order to address a broader range of data transfer tasks and expand operational use of the mechanism to new data sharing projects. The GICHD is currently exploring the possibility of data sharing through the use of maXML with a number of potential partners from domains outside the immediate mine action community. ContactAlan ARNOLD, Program Manager Mine Action Information Systems, a.arnold(at)gichd.org |
