3 Introducing xNAL

3.1 What is xNAL?

xNAL is a structured XML language for representing names and addresses.

xNAL consists of basic constructs that can form complex names and addresses. These constructs can be used for name and address data exchange or storage.

XNAL includes a choice of structures to allow even relatively unstructured name and address data to be described.

3.2 How NZ xNAL evolved

Starting in early 2000, the international standards body OASIS (Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), under the auspices of a TC (Technical Committee) established for this purpose, developed a family of XML standards called CIQ (Customer Information Quality).

The CIQ standards include xCIL (eXtensible Customer Information Language), which describes a whole raft of customer identifiers for exchange and storage. Within xCIL are xNL (eXtensible Name Language), xAL (eXtensible Address Language), and xNAL— the merging of xNL and xAL.

OASIS xNAL is currently at version 2. NZ xNAL is based on a draft of OASIS xNAL version 3. The Version 3 draft is only accessible to OASIS members and is not yet available to the public.

NOTE

NZ xNAL is expected to further evolve through agency agreement and collaboration. Agreements akin to Memorandum of Understanding should define the Values, Identifiers, abbreviations, and so on that are to be used in the exchange. As consensus is reached and the items are applicable for re-use, they will be added to this document.

Feedback from a recent Australian implementation is that although the work required at the beginning does create some resistance towards adoption of the standard (work was required to implement mappings and translations which wasn't immediately required by the application), the end result benefited greatly from having customer data defined in a "non-application" specific format.

3.3 Conformity with OASIS

With the objective of developing a standard that meets the needs of New Zealand names and addresses, the Working Group decided to create a profile of the latest version of the OASIS standard. NZ xNAL reuses the ideas, concepts, and structures from its OASIS ancestor, but there is no direct conformity between the standards. It was a conscious decision by the xNAL Working Group to break conformity where it conflicted with the objective. The resultant NZ xNAL standard is a simplified version of a draft OASIS xNAL v.3

3.3.1 Reasons for breaking the conformity

The xNAL WG decided to break conformity with OASIS xNAL because:

• OASIS xNAL v.3 is still evolving and there is no deadline for the final release
• OASIS xNAL v.2 would require a significantly bigger implementation effort than v.3
• OASIS xNAL is an international standard and would not be fully utilised for New Zealand names and addresses, adding more complexity to the implementations if adopted "as-is".

3.3.2 Implications of non-conformity

Non-conformance between NZ xNAL and OASIS xNAL mean:

• an application that complies with OASIS xNAL will not necessarily be directly interoperable with NZ xNAL
• any changes to OASIS xNAL v.3 will not apply to NZ xNAL
• errata to OASIS xNAL v.3 may not be directly applicable to NZ xNAL.

3.3.3 Conformity and interoperability

Conformity between NZ xNAL and OASIS xNAL is substantially maintained in that:

• NZ xNAL has no elements or attributes that are not present in OASIS xNAL; but OASIS xNAL may contain elements and attributes that are not present in NZ xNAL
• NZ xNAL has its own namespace identifiers for all its namespaces that are different from OASIS namespaces
• any NZ xNAL document or a fragment of a document can be converted into OASIS xNAL v.3 without any loss of information
• any NZ name or address in OASIS xNAL format can be converted into NZ xNAL format without any loss of information; however some loss of information can occur when converting overseas names and addresses from OASIS xNAL format into NZ xNAL.

NOTE

Interoperability with OASIS xNAL may be easily achieved through XSL transformations. XSL transformations are a remedial method to convert XML data into xNAL while name and address data is not stored as xNAL in databases.

3.3.4 Managing further enhancements to NZ xNAL

The Working Group under the auspices of the E-government Unit expect to monitor progress on OASIS xNAL v.3, feed back our experiences, include desirable changes to maintain conformity with OASIS xNAL and as a consequence, amend this document.

In addition, feedback from NZ xNAL implementations will be included in subsequent updates of this document.

It is expected that the Working Group will consider alignment with the ESA (Emergency Services and government Administration) standard once its schema becomes available.

Revision History (see Document Control, page i) will be used to detail changes in re-published updates of this document.

3.4 xNAL entities

xNAL consists of a number of entities that represent different levels of complexity of name and address structures. Each entity can be used on its own or as part of another layer or may be reused from another non-xNAL namespace. The xNAL entities are listed in the table below.

Namespace IDs are provided in a version-independent form. Namespace attributes version and release may apply where necessary. Refer to the schema files for more details and also Section 9, Applying namespaces, elements, and attributes guide.