4.1 Background: Standardizing the Standards

Because Energistics is a standards organization, it has always looked to standardize across its standards. However, much of the work to develop the main standards (WITSML, PRODML and RESQML) began organically, with different groups within traditional domain silos. Different project starts, schedules, development approaches, and maturity levels of the standards have imposed limits on what could be done in the past for consistency across all the standards.

However, more recently, the Energistics Board of Directors and special interest group (SIG) leadership agreed the time was right to begin a coordinate and focused effort for a common Energistics technical architecture. Since then, a team has been working to develop and deploy this common architecture.

Data objects common across all Energistics standards are in the common folder. To accommodate specific needs of the individual domain standards, each has its own "common" folder.

All RESQML top-level data objects inherit from RESQML common, which inherits from Energistics common.