Overview:

The Common Model Library (CML) working group is a consortium of 11 leading technology companies working on a CML specification based on the W3C Service Modeling Language (SML). 

CML will provide an extensible library of models and common modeling elements that can be shared, extended, and reused in communications across IT management tools and resources — simplifying the management and deployment of services while reducing costs.  Where appropriate, CML will leverage existing management data sources, industry standards and recognized best practice efforts.

The proposed CML specification is expected to include:

     • A library of models expressed as SML compliant documents
     • Common and shared modeling elements expressed as SML document fragments
     • Guidelines for encoding models
     • Patterns & best practices
     • Semantic definitions
     • Examples and scenarios
     • Compliance or conformance suites, validated at group workshop meetings.

CML uses the W3C SML and the SML Interchange Format (SML-IF) specifications. SML is well suited for encoding CML models because it defines an XML representation for modeling concepts like references between coherent sets of documents and XML Schema extensions to constrain the references. SML also provides the ability to apply constraints to a model.  The  W3C specifications are available at W3C’s SML Working Group web site:
http://www.w3.org/XML/SML .