MatML and its role in materials data exchange

MatML is playing an increasingly important role in the materials data field. Craig Seymour, Granta's Customer Projects Manager and their representative on the MatML Schema Development Working Group explains in a Question and Answer session what it is and what it can do for Granta's customers.

What is MatML?

In technical terms MatML is an extensible markup language, or XML, developed especially for the interchange of materials information. Putting it in simple terms it is a way of standardizing the representation of materials data so the data can be easily read and interpreted by different applications. The common web language, HTML, has several serious drawbacks when it is used for this purpose. HTML determines how the data is to be formatted for display but does not describe it. This is fine for publishing documents on the web, but it make it impossible to automate the processing of the data in those documents. I can easily illustrate this. MatML tags are descriptive of materials information e.g. <PropertyData >, <ChemicalComposition> and can easily be understood by a materials scientist. User defined tags can be added. In contrast HTML tags are fixed and non-descriptive.

To get round this problem, XML was developed to allow interest groups e.g. material scientists to create their own languages for data management and exchange. Hence MatML. If you really want to know more about the technical aspects of MatML, just go to the MatML website.

What is the history behind it?

The development of MatML was coordinated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Individuals and groups from the materials community were involved in the consultation process and these groups represented government labs, private industry, standards organizations and professional bodies.

The initial draft, MatML1.0 was released in April 2000 and we are now up to MatML3.0. MatML3.1 will be available in the near future.

Is there some kind of development organisation behind MatML?

Yes; there is a MatML Co-ordinating Committee which determines marketing and promotion, a MatML Schema Development Working Group, which is responsible for the contents and design of the schema and then there is an OASIS Technical Committee which publishes the standard and seeks recommendations to be included in the standard.

I represent Granta on the Schema Development Working Group and the OASIS Technical Committee.

Who else is on these committees?

The Schema Development Working Group has representatives from ASM International, MatWeb and MSC Software; the Technical Committee has representatives from Boeing, Granta, NASA and NIST.

What's the benefit of having MatML?

Materials data exchange used to be very difficult for both providers and consumers. There were many different proprietary formats but no common exchange format. As a consequence there was a lot of wasted or duplicated effort. It was also impossible for one computer application to input material properties from another application or database without human intervention. All in all the whole process was very inefficient.

Now we have MatML this is all changing. MatML will act as a publicly available materials data exchange format. MatML can provide interchange between applications, efficient data processing and a means of transmitting materials data over the web in response to searches. The principal advantage for material scientists is that it is simple and understandable. Just by looking at it you can tell a lot about its content, completeness and quality. If necessary, a materials person can even mark it up themselves which can't be done with, for example HTML.

The MatML markup really helps to convey the materials information.

Are you saying that everyone will be able to read everyone else's data?

No - that is not the aim of MatML. This would clearly have severe commercial implications. Organizations do not envisage storing data in MatML as a matter of routine. Think of MatML as a translation tool - just as for a foreign language. I'll give you three examples where it could be used.

Testing houses will be able to send results of tests to their customers without having to go through the process of agreeing a mutually acceptable format.

If customers could exchange their data with outside suppliers in MatML, it would result in lower costs as time and effort would be reduced. Currently this sort of exchange is typically done using a spreadsheet and both parties have to agree on the format of that spreadsheet so that their different systems can interpret the data correctly. MatML is a neutral format that is implementation independent and is both machine and human readable.

Users will be able to more easily combine and hence compare data from different sources. This will help to ensure that they choose the best material for a given application - a key philosophy behind all Granta Design's software.

Organizations tend to have their own specific features in their data. Can MatML deal with this?

Yes - While MatML is a generic data interchange format it can be extended to cover these specific additions.

How does Granta use MatML?

The current intention is that all import and export of data to CES will be in Granta's extended format of MatML. Other data formats will be accommodated by translating to MatML, for example we will convert Excel databases.

We've also done some work with NIST Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory on using an earlier version of MatML for the distribution of materials information by MSEL's Metallurgy Division.

Where can one learn more about MatML?

From the MatML and OASIS websites.