Energistics has released V1.0 of a new units of measure dictionary (UOMD) standard for public review. UOMD is intended to cover the needs of the oil and gas industry with units ‘in current use or which would be reasonably expected to be encountered.’ The units are oriented toward use in software. The Energistics UOM work group, which includes representation from PPDM and the SEG, has generated the unit names, symbols, derived units and conversion factors with an eye towards use in software and databases.
Energistics and its forbear POSC has a long history of authoritative UOM work—from the Schlumberger/API RP66, through Epicentre and a prior POSC UOM spec, whose version 2.2 is baked into Witsml. The new Energistics UOMD V1.0 builds on this previous work, providing a comprehensive although complex infrastructure for coding units.
Way back in March 2004, Oil IT Journal called for a public units of measure (UOM) description and discovery mechanism in a seminal editorial and report from the W3C titled, ‘A million miles of spaghetti are eaten every day’). While the computing community shows concern as to data types, it can cast fortune to the winds when it codes its UOM—with sometimes catastrophic results. The UOMD is therefore a step in the right direction although it would have been nice to see some web services for testing and validating new software.
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