ESML (Earth Science Markup Language)

It can be problematic to interpret and utilize scientific data in a variety of current and legacy formats; each format might require specialized code, resulting in applications that are tied to the data and the need to convert legacy data to another format.

ESML (Earth Science Markup Language) seeks to avoid this burden by containing the structural description of the data format in an external file. Applications can then utilize these descriptions to figure out how to read the data files, increasing interoperability between data formats and applications.

APIs and plug-in modules allow the core ESML library to extend its capabilities to many data formats and make it possible to flexibly package libraries and collections of formats together as well as add extended functionality. Different science communities can create their own ontologies to use with and further extend ESML.