Formal Definition
Part 8: Implementation methods for the integration of distributed systems - OWL Implementation
What does that mean ?
ISO 15926 by its very nature enables the transfer of information in an unambiguous way. However, it is only when the data is represented in a file as a transfer mechanism that we actually see the migration.
With the advent of RDF and OWL as world wide web standard for representing different types of data this was the first data representation that the ISO 15926 community have tackled.
As OWL is based on RDF and RDF is based upon XML it is a very common format (and indeed the latest versions of Word and Excel now save their files in XML) and one which most people are familiar with and one which is very easily handled by computers and thus assists the business need of automation.
It is the challenge of technology providers to hide this from users, just as most users do not know the format of a DGN file or DWG file, but of course as the OWL ISO 15926 format is a public and international standard everyone can read and more importantly understand the content without any ambiguity.