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The Meta Data Coalition’s Open Information Model (OIM) is a non-proprietary and technology-neutral, and extensible specification
of the core metadata types that are representative of enterprise-wide information architectures and environments. This enterprise-wide
view includes analysis and design, objects and components, database and warehousing, and knowledge management, so in this
sense, the scope of the OIM is much broader than that of the CWM, which is focused primarily on the data warehousing domain.
MDC-OIM was originally developed primarily by Microsoft Corporation and Platinum Technology. OIM was subsequently transferred
to the MDC, under whose auspices it continues to evolve as a public-domain specification.
MDC-OIM uses UML as its formal specification language. OIM defines common representations of various types of data sources
and targets (record, relational, OLAP) and transformations between sources and targets. The OIM metamodel derives from the
UML metamodel, and the OIM specification claims that OIM has a repository orientation, but unlike CWM, is not compliant with
the MOF. OIM does not use XMI as an interchange mechanism. Rather, it uses a specific OIM to XML encoding to generate interchange
files.
The following subsections describe commonalities and differences between CWM and OIM. In the interests of specificity, these
comparisons are limited to the salient features of the Database Schema, Data Transformation, OLAP Schema, and Record-Oriented
Database Schema models. These comparisons can serve as the starting point for an alignment exercise between CWM and OIM in
these model areas, but it should be noted that not all possible points of convergence and divergence are covered here.