Berkeley Academic Business Language

The Berkeley Academic Business Language (BABL) is an evolving set of models and associated XML schemas for the domain of university education.

Work on BABL began in Fall 2002 with models of "course" and "role" as they are used across numerous applications and contexts. For example, “course” is used in the Course Approval System, the Course Catalog, the Schedule of Classes, Transcripts, and so on.

BABL is being built "on top of" Universal Business Language , a horizontal vocabulary of standard semantic components needed in almost every business domain.Creating common data models for entities like "course" and "student" that are used in numerous applications requires an investment in careful and thorough analysis, but the benefits are substantial. System developers are more productive if they don't have to design data models from scratch, and common data enable better integration and interoperability between services. Common data models also facilitate the reuse of information resources and databases, opening up possibilities for creating more user-friendly applications that integrate legacy "stovepipes" or that enable entirely new applications.

http://istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Fall2003/ctrdoceng.html