Taxonomy - Data Interchange Services

Data Interchange Services

Data interchange services provide specialized support for the interchange of information between applications and the external environment. These services are designed to handle data interchange between applications on the same platform and applications on different (heterogeneous) platforms. An analogous set of services exists for object-oriented data interchange, which can be found under data interchange services and externalization services in the paragraph on Object Services.

Document generic data typing and conversion services are supported by specifications for encoding the data (e.g., text, pictures, numerics, special characters) and both the logical and visual structures of electronic documents, including compound documents.
Graphics data interchange services are supported by device-independent descriptions of picture elements for vector-based graphics and descriptions for raster-based graphics.
Specialized data interchange services are supported by specifications that describe data used by specific vertical markets. Markets where such specifications exist include the medical, library, dental, assurance and oil industries.
Electronic data interchange services are used to create an electronic (paperless) environment for conducting commerce and achieving significant gains in quality, responsiveness, and savings afforded by such an environment. Examples of applications that use electronic commerce services include vendor search and selection; contract award; product data; shipping, forwarding, and receiving; customs; payment information; inventory control; maintenance; tax-related data; and insurance-related data.
Fax services are used to create, examine, transmit and/or receive fax images.

The following functional areas are currently supported mainly by application software, but are progressing towards migration into the Application Platform:

Raw graphics interface functions support graphics data file formats such as TIFF, JPEG, GIF and CGM.
Text processing functions, including the capability to create, edit, merge, and format text.
Document processing functions, including the capability to create, edit, merge, and format documents. These functions enable the composition of documents that incorporate graphics, images, and even voice annotation, along with stylized text. Included are advanced formatting and editing functions such as style guides, spell checking, use of multiple columns, table of contents generation, headers and footers, outlining tools, and support for scanning images into bit-mapped formats. Other capabilities include compression and decompression of images or whole documents.
Publishing functions, including incorporation of photographic quality images and color graphics, and advanced formatting and style features such as wrapping text around graphic objects or pictures and kerning (i.e., changing the spacing between text characters). These functions also interface with sophisticated printing and production equipment. Other capabilities include color rendering and compression and decompression of images or whole documents.
Video processing functions, including the capability to capture, compose, edit, compress and decompress video information using formats such as MPEG. Still graphics and title generation functions are also provided.
Audio processing functions, including the capability to capture, compose, edit compress and decompress audio information.
Multimedia processing functions, including the capability to store, retrieve, modify, sort, search, and print all or any combination of the above-mentioned media. This includes support for microfilm media, optical storage technology that allows for storage of scanned or computer produced documents using digital storage techniques, a scanning capability, and data compression and decompression.
Media synchronization functions allow the synchronization of streams of data such as audio and video for presentation purposes.
Information presentation and distribution functions are used to manage the distribution and presentation of information from batch and interactive applications. These functions are used to shield business area applications from how information is used. They allow business area applications to create generic pools of information without embedding controls that dictate the use of that information. Information distribution and presentation functions include the selection of the appropriate formatting functions required to accomplish the distribution and presentation of information to a variety of business area applications and users. Information presentation and distribution functions also include the capability to store, archive, prioritize, restrict, and recreate information.
Hypertext functions support the generation, distribution, location, search and display of text and images either locally or globally. These functions include searching and browsing, hypertext linking and the presentation of multimedia information.