The S.IM.PL (Support for Information Mapping in Programming Languages) project develops new declarative mark-up languages integrated with extensions to imperative programming languages (e.g., Java, Objective C, ...), and communications frameworks, to assist developers traversing the divide between information and software.

ecologylab.xml is an XML binding language, which uses an embedded metalanguage and translation scopes to represent bindings between object declarations and XML nodes, for serialization. Currently, we support declarations in Java, with both Java and Objective C as target languages. Support is planned for C# and C++.

Object-Oriented Distributed Semantic Services (OODSS) builds on ecologylab.xml to develop an object-oriented semantic communications framework for message passing and remote method invocation. The goal is to simplify practical distributed computing for software developers. Again, semantics are represented with metalanguage and translation scopes, with Java supported for servers and clients, and Objective C for clients. In comparison with approaches such as SOAP, consistent strong typing of data structures and fields reduces the burden on programmers.

We introduce meta-metadata: integrated representations that consistently describe how metadata can be extracted from information resources found in digital repositories and on the Internet, represented internally, acted on by software tools, and presented to users. Again, meta-metadata builds on ecologylab.xml, using its descriptions of the structures of classes and fields to connect data structures with meta-meta-information, enabling development of reusable code for processing of information from templated web site sources by curators writing scripting language.