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Overview

The idea to provide terminology based software rather than software based on a specific metadata model and its implementation was born at the Output Database Conference ’99 in Australia. run Software (Germany) and Space Time Research (Australia) discussed to build software that is based on a Semantic Interface for being able to communicate without dependency on specific database software or a specific metadata models.

A semantic interface is based on common terminology definitions (i.e. on the conceptual metadata models as defined by statistical experts). The interface provides access mechanisms based on different technical standards as CORBA or COM.

The semantic interface maps the conceptual model to different metadata model implementations. Thus, statistical software becomes independent of specific implementations and models for statistical metadata databases.

Based on a conceptual metadata model a family of statistical production tools can be provided allowing comfortable documentation and rich production facilities. These tools are not only independent of the specific database software used but also on the metadata model.

The Common Metadata Interface ComeIn is an interface that defines the functionality for mapping conceptual models to any type of metadata base. A specific ComeIn implementation is the BridgeNA-ComeIn interface that maps the conceptual metadata models build by different statistical offices. ComeIn is provided as C++ and COM interface. The ComeIn-Interface specification including the ComeIn-COM wrapper are public and can be downloaded for free. Here you will find also an implementation guide that describes how to define a ComeIn mapping DLL to your own database and a programmer's guide that describes how to build ComeIn applications.