ISO 22745 specifies a system for descriptive technology consisting of
open technical dictionary (OTD),
identification guide (IG),
identification scheme,
procedures for maintenance of an OTD,
interfaces for querying information from an OTD, including terminology related to a given concept.
An OTD is a collection of terminology defined by and obtained from consensus bodies such as ISO, IEC, and other groups that have a consensus process for developing terminology. An OTD contains terms, definitions, and images of concepts used to describe individuals, organizations, locations, goods and services. Within ISO 22745, an item is described through membership in a class and a set of property value pairs.
An OTD
allows properties to be unambiguously defined in an ISO 10303 file,
allows information to be unambiguously defined and exchanged between multi-national partners without loss of meaning,
supports synchronization of databases with minimum data mapping requirements,
provides transparent information flow among multiple information formats and specifically between government and commercial systems,
provides timely and accurate data that can be used to support finance and accounting processes,
supports cost-effective sourcing,
supports inventory management and rationalization,
provides for both commercial and intra-governmental transactions,
supports multiple units of measure and international currencies,
supports multiple classifications and multiple languages.
Any consensus organization can submit terminology for inclusion in an OTD. ISO 22745 does not establish a new process for standardizing terminology. Each OTD will have a globally unambiguous identifier for each concept and provide a reference back to the original source for terminology (terms, definitions and images). OTDs are designed to link terms and definitions with the same semantic content and to reference the original source of each term and definition. Thus, OTDs are intended not to duplicate existing standards, but to provide comprehensive collections of terminology used to describe individuals, organizations, locations, goods and services.
Although the process for harmonizing terminology is outside the scope of ISO 22745, an OTD can serve as a useful research tool to aid the harmonization process, e.g. between ISO, IEC and other standards.
An IG specifies which concepts can be used and constrains which concepts can be linked to each other. An example for the latter is when an IG specifies the properties which can be linked to a class. Furthermore, an IG can specify which terms, definitions and images are applicable, in a case where there are multiple terms, definitions and images for concepts.
Master data is data held by an organization that describes the entities that are both independent and fundamental for that organization, and that it needs to reference in order to perform its transactions.
A catalogue is a representation of master data in the form of property value pairs.
See ISO 22745-1 for a more detailed overview of ISO 22745.
This part of ISO 22745 specifies a specialization of ISO/TS 29002-31 that is a conceptual information model and a exchange file format for queries for master data. The conceptual model is in Unified Modeling Language (UML). The physical file format is based on Extensible Markup Language (XML). This part of ISO 22745 specifies a subset of Extensible Markup Language (XML) based physical file format, which is defined in ISO/TS 29002-31. The subset is defined using the ISO/IEC 19757-3 "Schematron" language.