How Information Exchange Actually Works

---

What we find, however, is that each organization manages information a bit differently, even though the underlaying physical object is the same. Each organization has a different view of the world and designs its software pragmatically to support its work practices.

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 (an in fact many professionals make a good living doing just that) but it is costly and time-consuming.

In the Introduction to ISO 15926 we give an example of two engineers, each working for a different organization, and who wish to exchange some information but cannot easily do so because their respective systems were designed with different purposes in mind.

Next

• How ISO 15926 Handles Information Exchange

---