Standards for data management within and among local and distributed information systems environments. SC 32 provides enabling technologies to promote harmonization of data management facilities across sector-specific areas. Specifically, SC 32 standards include: • reference models and frameworks for the coordination of existing and emerging standards; • definition of data domains, data types, and data structures, and their associated semantics; • languages, services, and protocols for persistent storage, concurrent access, concurrent update, and interchange of data; • methods, languages, services, and protocols to structure, organize, and register metadata and other information resources associated with sharing and interoperability, including electronic commerce.