Overview and discussion of electronic exchange standards for technical information

Nowadays more and more information is being exchanged electronically. Reasons for this include a higher degree of cooperation between information suppliers and users, an increasing demand for speed (of production and modification, and reduction of time to market), and cost reduction. On the technology side, the advent of the electronic highway enables effective and efficient electronic information exchange. For reasons of timeliness and life cycle costs, standards and specifications are becoming more important. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of standards and specifications for electronic exchange of (technical document) information and to discuss the most common ones currently available for text, images, and document exchange. Emerging standards and specifications, such as for audio, video and virtual environments are also briefly discussed. Finally, a brief description is given of a standard for enterprise integration and product data exchange. The availability of tools is described in connection with each standard or specification. The paper concludes with a brief selection preference for the standards and specifications presented in this paper. To indicate how tools can be integrated for virtual enterprise working environments, a facility for generation of working environments developed at the National Aerospace Laboratory is referenced.