Data standards initiatives progress report

The ASTM International and IUPAC projects on the Analytical Information Markup Language (AnIML) is aimed at tackling the complexities of various analytical data models. IUPAC's XML in Chemistry projects have progressed to the stage where the new IUPAC Provisional Recommendation on the XML-Based IUPAC Standard for Experimental, Predicted, and Critically Evaluated Thermodynamic Property Data Storage and Capture (ThermoML) has been submitted and is undergoing final public review. Once the work is complete, these standards can become the core of any scientific data management system (SDMS) ensuring continuing data availability. Under this, a new JCAMP-DX spectroscopic data exchange standard for electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), electron spin resonance (ESR) and electron magnetic resonance (EMR) data sets, is developed. The AnIML project succeeded in getting as far as having a working prototype viewer at the beginning of 2004 that could handle simple mass, nuclear magnetic resonance, infrared and UV spectra, as well as chromatograms.