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The Meta Data Coalition’s MetaData Interchange Specification (MDIS) is a nonproprietary and extensible mechanism for the interchange
of meta data between MDIS-aware tools.
MDIS Version 1.1 consists of a metamodel, which defines the syntax and semantics of the metadata to be exchanged, as well
as the specification of a framework for supporting an actual MDIS implementation. The MDIS Metamodel is a hierarchically-structured,
semantic database model that’s defined by a tag language. The metamodel consists of a number of generic, semantic constructs,
such as Element, Record, View, Dimension, Level, and Subschema, plus a Relationship entity that can be used in the specification
of associations between arbitrary source and target constructs. The MDIS metamodel may be extended through the use of named
properties that are understood to be tool-specific and not defined within MDIS. Interchange is accomplished via an ASCII file
representation of an instance of this metamodel. Although support for an API is mentioned in the specification, no API definition
is provided.
The MDIS Access Framework specifies several fairly general mechanisms that support the interchange of metamodel instances.
The Tool and Configuration Profiles define semaphores that ensure consistent, bidirectional metadata exchange between tools.
The MDIS Profile defines a number of system parameters (environment variables) that would be necessary in the definition of
an MDIS deployment. Finally, Import and Export functions are exposed by the framework as the primary file interchange mechanisms
for use by tools.