In the IT industry, there are a number of systems management applications with proprietary data formats. There has long been a need for an industry-standard format for expressing and modeling configuration management data, and for exchanging this data between applications and vendors.
SML and SML-IF
The Service Modeling Language (SML) is a specification, submitted to W3C, for modeling complex services and systems, including structure, policies, and constraints. SML is based on a subset of XML Schema 1.0. It includes Schematron and XPath 1.0 support for validating constraints. It also includes some new extensions of XML Schema that allow for inter-document references for expressing data relationships.
The SML-Interchange Format (SML-IF) is a peer specification of the SML specification that defines the means for packaging related SML documents as an aggregate. This schema allows for large amounts of data to be easily exchanged between applications, and also provides context for the aggregate. It also gives the ability to bind SML documents to specific Schematron rules.
CMDBf's relationship to SML
The CMDBf specification defines an XML syntax for providing query results. Embedded in a query result is a configuration record containing data specific to the repository, possibly using a unique syntax. SML is a recommended syntax for expressing a configuration record, given the unique capabilities it provides over standard XML Schema. The example SML MDR provided with COSMOS makes use of SML references to highlight this capability.
SML and SML-IF COSMOS Tooling
COSMOS provides a rich set of tooling to support working with SML and SML-IF data.
See the section Service Modeling Language Tooling and Usage for more information about tooling.