Data portability is the key to avoiding expensive application lock-in

In an environment where the life cycle of software applications used to capture and manage data is but a fraction of the life cycle of the data itself, the issues of data portability and long-term data preservation are becoming critical. On a personal level, for example, it is more of an annoyance than a real problem when we realize that in order to change banks we have to re-enter all the information we need to pay our bills. If you thought this was no more than a technical oversight of the banking community you would be underestimating the time and effort they put into keeping their customers.

It was not that long ago that we were told that it was technically impossible for us to take our telephone number with us when we moved carriers. Actually, we found out that our telephone number was not ours after all, when the carriers claimed them as one of their business assets.

Companies are realizing that they may not be the owners of what they thought was their own data, even when it is on their own computers. To say nothing of SaaS (Software as a Service) offerings or cloud computing where data is “safely” stored by the service provider. The problem is not with simple documents or spreadsheets but with more complex data where the meaning of the data is dependent on the metadata or the organization of the data.

If your data is labeled with proprietary metadata or stored in a proprietary data model where the metadata or data model belongs to a third party, such as the software application provider, then your data is a legal “joint work.” A joint work copyright is owned jointly by you and the owner of the proprietary metadata or the data model. Removing or replacing the metadata or reverse engineering the data model is a violation of the copyright act unless you have the permission of the “joint” owner to do so.

While we certainly hope for the best in every relationship, it also makes sense to plan and document your exit strategy. It is much easier to do this up front when time is on your side, and your check book is still in your pocket. Claims that an application exports data in XML does address the syntax part of the problem, but that is the easy part. What you are looking for is to be able to export all of your data in a form that you can easily upload into another application. This can be a time consuming and expensive exercise not to be undertaken lightly, an upgrade will always be cheaper. This is the hallmark of a product lock-in.

ISO 10303 is the standard that defines the neutral exchange format for design manufacturing or production data. ISO 8000-110:2008 is the standard for the neutral exchange of Master data; the data that describes individuals, organizations, locations, goods and services.

Compliance with these standards is not technically challenging for an application provider and the most common reason given for not implementing them is a lack of customer demand. This will change as more companies realize that they must take control and actively manage their data. In a world rapidly moving towards SaaS and cloud computing, it really pays to pause and consider not just the physical security of your data but its portability.

As the project leader for ISO 8000, ECCMA (Electronic Commerce Code Management Association) has developed a series of compliance certificates for individuals, organizations and their software applications and data services. ECCMA issues certificates and maintains a register of certified individuals, organizations, software applications and software services; more information can be found at http://www.eccma.org.