OASIS Standard: Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA)

OASIS Members Approve Open Standard for Accessing Unstructured Information

IBM, EMC, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Manchester, University of Tokyo, U.S. National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and Others Collaborate on Platform for Semantic Analysis and Search

Boston, MA, USA. March 19, 2009.

OASIS, the international open standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) Version 1.0 specification as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification.

UIMA standardizes semantic search and content analytics, providing a common method for meaningfully accessing data contained in text such as e-mails, blog entries, news feeds, and notes, as well as in audio recordings, images, and video.

Unstructured information represents the largest, most current, and fastest growing source of knowledge available to businesses and governments. It includes documents found on the web, plus an estimated 80% of the information generated by enterprises around the world.

"The approval of UIMA as an OASIS Standard represents a significant milestone in the areas of semantic analysis and search," said David Ferrucci of IBM, chair of the OASIS UIMA Technical Committee. "UIMA enables interoperability among a variety of application-specific analysis engines allowing the capture of a broad range of knowledge from unstructured sources. The results can then be used by search engines, databases or knowledge bases, ultimately delivering more value from all types of unstructured information by discovering relationships, identifying patterns and predicting outcomes."

"While OASIS has been developing the UIMA standard, the Apache Software Foundation has hosted an incubator project for UIMA-based open source software," noted Laurent Liscia, executive director of OASIS. "This is an exciting example of how open standards and open source development projects can complement one another to everyone's benefit."

In accordance with eligibility requirements for all OASIS Standards, successful use of UIMA was verified by IBM, Amsoft, Carnegie Mellon University, Thomson Reuters, and the University of Tokyo.

"Our customers continue to look for flexible, open ways to access and make better use of information buried throughout the enterprise in places such as e-mails, call center notes, images, recordings and feeds to extract new intelligence. IBM continues to build a number of products based on the UIMA standard. For example, IBM eDiscovery Analyzer, IBM Content Analyzer, IBM OmniFind Enterprise Edition, and IBM InfoSphere Warehouse are already helping customers worldwide generate new insights and make better business decisions in use cases spanning diverse areas including legal discovery, customer care and criminal investigations," said Carl Kessler, vice president of worldwide development for IBM content management.

UIMA was developed under the Royalty Free on Limited Terms mode of the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights Policy. Participation in the OASIS UIMA Technical Committee remains open to all companies, non-profit groups, governments, academic institutions, and individuals. As with all OASIS projects, archives of the Committee's work are accessible to both members and non-members, and OASIS hosts an open mail list for public comment.

Additional Information

OASIS UIMA Technical Committee
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/uima/

About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) drives the development, convergence, and adoption of open standards for the global information society. A not-for-profit consortium, OASIS advances standards for SOA, security, Web services, documents, e-commerce, government and law, localisation, supply chains, XML processing, and other areas of need identified by its members. OASIS open standards offer the potential to lower cost, stimulate innovation, grow global markets, and protect the right of free choice of technology. The consortium has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.

Press Contact

Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS
Email: carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
Tel: +1.978.667.5115 x209 (office)
Tel: +1.941.284.0403 (mobile)

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive.

SEARCH Advanced Search ABOUT Site Map CP RSS Channel Contact Us Sponsoring CP About Our Sponsors NEWS Cover Stories Articles & Papers Press Releases CORE STANDARDS XML SGML Schemas XSL/XSLT/XPath XLink XML Query CSS SVG TECHNOLOGY REPORTS XML Applications General Apps Government Apps Academic Apps EVENTS LIBRARY Introductions FAQs Bibliography Technology and Society Semantics Tech Topics Software Related Standards Historic	OASIS Standard: Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) OASIS Members Approve Open Standard for Accessing Unstructured Information IBM, EMC, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Manchester, University of Tokyo, U.S. National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and Others Collaborate on Platform for Semantic Analysis and Search Boston, MA, USA. March 19, 2009. OASIS, the international open standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) Version 1.0 specification as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. UIMA standardizes semantic search and content analytics, providing a common method for meaningfully accessing data contained in text such as e-mails, blog entries, news feeds, and notes, as well as in audio recordings, images, and video. Unstructured information represents the largest, most current, and fastest growing source of knowledge available to businesses and governments. It includes documents found on the web, plus an estimated 80% of the information generated by enterprises around the world. "The approval of UIMA as an OASIS Standard represents a significant milestone in the areas of semantic analysis and search," said David Ferrucci of IBM, chair of the OASIS UIMA Technical Committee. "UIMA enables interoperability among a variety of application-specific analysis engines allowing the capture of a broad range of knowledge from unstructured sources. The results can then be used by search engines, databases or knowledge bases, ultimately delivering more value from all types of unstructured information by discovering relationships, identifying patterns and predicting outcomes." "While OASIS has been developing the UIMA standard, the Apache Software Foundation has hosted an incubator project for UIMA-based open source software," noted Laurent Liscia, executive director of OASIS. "This is an exciting example of how open standards and open source development projects can complement one another to everyone's benefit." In accordance with eligibility requirements for all OASIS Standards, successful use of UIMA was verified by IBM, Amsoft, Carnegie Mellon University, Thomson Reuters, and the University of Tokyo. "Our customers continue to look for flexible, open ways to access and make better use of information buried throughout the enterprise in places such as e-mails, call center notes, images, recordings and feeds to extract new intelligence. IBM continues to build a number of products based on the UIMA standard. For example, IBM eDiscovery Analyzer, IBM Content Analyzer, IBM OmniFind Enterprise Edition, and IBM InfoSphere Warehouse are already helping customers worldwide generate new insights and make better business decisions in use cases spanning diverse areas including legal discovery, customer care and criminal investigations," said Carl Kessler, vice president of worldwide development for IBM content management. UIMA was developed under the Royalty Free on Limited Terms mode of the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights Policy. Participation in the OASIS UIMA Technical Committee remains open to all companies, non-profit groups, governments, academic institutions, and individuals. As with all OASIS projects, archives of the Committee's work are accessible to both members and non-members, and OASIS hosts an open mail list for public comment. Additional Information OASIS UIMA Technical Committee http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/uima/ About OASIS OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) drives the development, convergence, and adoption of open standards for the global information society. A not-for-profit consortium, OASIS advances standards for SOA, security, Web services, documents, e-commerce, government and law, localisation, supply chains, XML processing, and other areas of need identified by its members. OASIS open standards offer the potential to lower cost, stimulate innovation, grow global markets, and protect the right of free choice of technology. The consortium has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Press Contact Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS Email: carol.geyer@oasis-open.org Tel: +1.978.667.5115 x209 (office) Tel: +1.941.284.0403 (mobile) Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive.