The purpose of ISO 8000 is to make it easier to contract for quality data and to identify companies and software applications that can deliver quality data. ISO 8000 quality data is “portable data that meets stated requirements.” Portable data is data that can be separated from a software application. This is important because if the data can only be used or read using a specific licensed software application then the data is also subject to the terms of the license – basically what you think of as “your data” may not in reality belong to you and what you can do with the data may be restricted by the terms of the software license. You can still buy and sell ISO 8000 quality data but it will not be linked to a software application. Separating data from software is also very important when it comes the long term preservation of data. Data that meets stated requirements is a reference to the fact that you measure the quality of data by comparing data to a “stated” data requirement. ISO 22745-30 is the preferred standard for stating data requirements in XML as well as for exchanging portable data. ISO 22745 creates portable data by labeling the data using an ISO 22745 compliant Open Technical Dictionary such as the ECCMA Open Technical Dictionary (eOTD).