The Interop Glossary

An evolving vocabulary for the law of interoperability governing electronic data format and communication protocol technical specifications, standards, and technical regulations.

d
data format
A specification for the consistent structuring of data of a specified type. Data structures include, inter alia, markup languages, file formats, file storage systems, database records, and communications protocols. Most data formats include multiple sub-structures. Specification of data formats is essential to interoperability in the ICT sector.
document-level interoperability
As opposed to application-level interoperability, document-level interoperability in the standards context is achieved without knowledge of another implementation's unique data formats or communications protocols because a standardized interface for the interchange of information is fully specified by a standard, technical regulation, or technical specification. See also: application-level interoperability
DTD
Document Type Definition defined slightly differently within the XML and SGML standards (XML is a subset of SGML). DTD is one of several SGML and XML schema languages, and is also the term used to describe a document or portion thereof that is authored in the particular DTD language, e.g., HTML. A DTD is primarily used for the expression of a schema via a set of declarations that conform to a particular markup syntax and that describe a class, or type, of SGML or XML documents, in terms of constraints on the structure of those documents. A DTD may also declare constructs that are not always required to establish document structure, but that may affect the interpretation of some documents. As a starting point, see Wikipedia article. See also: schema