Hoping to improve the utility of electronic materials property data, NIST scientists have embarked on a project to standardize the way materials property data is posted on the World Wide Web.

The NIST Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory is inviting others in the materials property data community to join this effort, called Materials Property Data Markup Language (MatML). The goal of MatML is to create a standard markup language for web-based materials property data collections. While current hypertext markup language specifies elements of web page design, it contains no mechanism for tagging or specifying any of the hundreds of materials properties that materials scientists and engineers need to know. MatML will address interpretation and interoperability of materials property data.

The goal is to develop a markup language that will describe the data source, the material and the material properties. Ultimately, this project could allow researchers to easily use electronic materials property data from multiple sources in models, simulations or distributed databases.

For more information or to join the MatML effort, contact project leader Ed Begley at NIST, (301) 975-6118, e-mail begley@nist.gov.

Links

• MatML