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= How Information Exchange Actually Works =

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== What We Actually Get ==

Instead, we find that each organization manages information a bit differently, even though the physical object is the same. Each organization has a different view of the world and designs its software pragmatically.

For example, the purchasing agent is professionally interested that all of the engineer’s requirements are met in whatever is purchased, but treats the property values as text strings. So if the tag number of the pump were ''37-PT-307A'' it would probably be stored in the purchasing database as a single text string, including the dashes.

However, to the engineer, the individual parts of the tag number actually means something. Therefore, the engineering software will likely deal store the parts seperatly and concatenate them, along with the dashes, only for a report.  Human beings will be able to easily look at the parts and figure out the correct tag number, but computers cannot do this on their own.

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As a result, making the software of all the participants communicate is like trying to pound square pegs into round holes, except that in this case there are many different shapes of pegs and many different shapes of holes. It is certainly possible to make the software communicate. In fact many professionals make a good living doing just that. But it is costly and time-consuming.


== Next ==
 * [wiki:ISO15926Primer_15926_Works How Information Exchange Works with ISO 15926]

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