SHORT NAMES REGISTRY TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER SUCCESS STORY.

NIST has turned over maintenance of the ISO TC184/SC4 Short Names Registry to a vendor of software tools based on the ISO STEP standard (ISO 10303). The Registry is a software environment for maintaining a database of short names for each of the entity data types within a library of data model schemas specified using the EXPRESS language, and was created within MEL to support the ISO TC184/SC4 Secretariat. The Secretariat uses the registry to ensure that these identifiers are consistent across STEP and other SC4 standards. Since its inception, the Registry evolved from a simple character-based database update application to a web-accessible environment automating much of the drudgery of checking syntax, generating reports, and emailing requests to generate short names. These enhancements were possible thanks to strategic use of NISTs STEP Class Library (http://www.nist.gov/scl) and CGI.tcl library (http://expect.nist.gov/cgi.tcl). Now that the Registry has become a stable and robust service and industrial mom entum behind STEP is strong, it is appropriate for MEL to turn over the Registry to a private organization.