The American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) XML Workgroup, formed to develop guidelines and standardized terminology for internet based steel transactions, has released a set of XML-based specifications for business transactions in the steel industry. The workgroup has released draft versions of the AISI guidelines "with the intent of gathering input from interested parties; a stated objective of the workgroup is to ensure a convergence path with other standards bodies." Phase One activities in the XML project have included: (1) a data requirements review and element mapping for the Shipping Notice, Material Release, Inventory Advice, Material Receipt, Test Report, Customer Purchase Order, Service Order, and Vendor Order transactions; (2) construction of an XML steel industry glossary of terms for document usage; (3) Construction of DTDs for reviewed transactions. The published Overview document provides a discussion of methodology, document organization, XML DTD, and the data dictionary, while remaining documents are transaction-based and provide the structure and content requirements of each transaction's payload section. The primary objective of the AISI XML Workgroup is to develop standardized XML terminology to be used throughout steel related transactions documents. The task to be completed involves the translation of existing X.12 based transaction documents to XML. This process will simultaneously create a Steel XML Glossary, which can then be used throughout the industry and by developers of internet based applications for the industry."