Metaphor: Web Browsers

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Contents

1. ISO 15926 is like HTML
   1. Similarities and Differences Between the Metaphor and ISO 15926

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ISO 15926 is like HTML

If everyone involved in Plant Design and Operations were to use ISO 15926 to exchage information about plant objects, it would be similar to the way everyone now uses HTML to code their web pages.

For instance, if you want to look at the web page of a pump manufactuerer, you don't need to know anything beyond the website address of the company. When your browser connects to the website it assumes that what it finds will be encoded in HyperText? Markup Langugage, or HTML. Of course, it will be, if the manufacturer wants to get any business through the web page because HTML is the standard format of the World Wide Web.

And it doesn't matter which browser you use. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Netscape, all are written to understand HTML.

Imagine the hassel if you first had to contact the company and ask for the encoding format, then instruct your IT folks to write a translator program before you could access the website? Of course you wouldn't do it. And of course the company would not make a web page in the first place because no one would use it.

Similarities and Differences Between the Metaphor and ISO 15926

Many websites today are actually written in HTML so the metaphor implies that a large proportion of plant information will actually be writting in ISO 15926. This is probably not going to be the case. Most companies will maintain their plant information in whatever format they currently use and write an interpreter to render the information in 15926 format when a web browser asks for it.

In this regard, ISO 15926 is more like the case today where a database is exposed to the World Wide Web. When a user queries the database (via her web browser), a program dynamically searches the database and reders the results in HTML "on the fly".

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