EnerXML: a schema for representing energy simulation data

The    eXtensible Markup Language (XML)  has recently become  the W3C  Standard      for commu nicating   data   over   the   Internet.      The   e- commerce    industry    and    several    new    software applications  have  embraced  this  technology  taking advantage of the    potential    for    re-usable    and interoperable  data.    In  order  to  take  advantage  of XML, each industry is coming up with standard tag terminologies   such   that   the   data   can   be   self describing  and  understandable,  independent  of  the application creating or using it.   Adopting XML for energy  simulation  data  representation  would  enable different  simulation  programs  to  work with a single data format and allow other applications to make use of  this  data  or  even  produce  part  of  this  data. EnerXML  schema  is  a  proposal  to  standardize  tag terminologies  for  energy  simulation  data  such  that applications interested in interoperability can provide an Application Program Interface (API) conforming to this  schema.    This  paper  presents  an  overview  of interoperability  issues,  introduces  the  XML  concept and describes the proposed framework for EnerXML chema.