OracleVoice: How To Convert Data Silos Into Open Data Exchanges - Forbes

"In federal government, two related policies—the Digital Government Strategy and the Open Data Policy—are spurring agencies to make data more widely available to the public. At last count, Uncle Sam’s Data.gov site provided access to 295 application programming interfaces (APIs) and nearly 100,000 data sets, but there’s still a long way to go. In the private sector, such data sharing is becoming a competitive necessity. The New York Times reports that data broker Acxiom has launched a website that lets consumers view the data Acxiom ACXM -0.38% has collected on them—everything from household income to their hobbies and shopping habits. The site, AboutTheData.com, is a manifestation of a new strategy of 'openness' at Acxiom, according to the Times ... Two of the big camps in the world of data formats are the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). What’s been missing is a fast, easy, and cheap way to bring those two camps together. I’m happy to report that a solution now exists to do that.  It’s called the Content Assembly Mechanism (CAM ) toolkit, a collection of open source software tools for creating XML data exchanges and APIs. The just-released CAM version 3.0 adds support for JSON.  The upshot is that XML developers can now use JSON-formatted data in information exchanges and web services, and JSON developers can work with XML content. 'We really need cross pollination to occur. That’s what we’re doing with this toolkit,' David Webber, information architect with Oracle ORCL NaN% Public Sector, told me. For a full explanation of CAM 3.0, see David’s blog post, which includes a link to three videos on how to get started with the toolset ... CAM 3.0 is part of a broader open source, open data initiative called Verify XML, which provides development resources and a framework to help organizations create data exchanges. Verify XML is sponsored by Oracle, andCAM 3.0 and related tools are hosted on SourceForge.net.  Who uses this stuff? CAM downloads, which have been growing steadily, are approaching 1,000 downloads per week. Among other scenarios, CAM can be used in support of the National Information Exchange Model, a widely used data-sharing framework in government. (NIEM 3.0 is due this fall.)  In one example of how these tools are used, the Verify XML site shows a prototype app that lets users search for pharmacies in the Chicago area. The app uses CAM and Open-XDX—a rapid development tool for SQL-to-XML conversions—to pull data from a MySQL database into a familiar map interface. A person might use the app to locate a pharmacy based on zip code and type of vaccine needed.  As the above examples illustrate, open data projects can create stronger ties between businesses or government agencies and their customers by putting valuable information into customers’ hands ..."