With the drive for measurement system interoperability in today's global industrial environment, organizations are retooling Calibration Management Systems (CMS) to enable worldwide generation, distribution and sharing of metrology data. This model involves the complete chain of metrology organizations, including National Metrology Institutes, regional calibration service companies and global manufacturing corporations. Simultaneously, a major sea change has occurred in software development paradigms involving CMS. This paper defines where these two initiatives coincide with the application of n-tier component based software architecture to CMS. This architecture allows thin client deployment across today's highly distributed organizations and provides increased system security and data integrity over a variety of network configurations, including LANs, WANs, VPNs, and the Internet. To foster this interoperability, XML schemas can be utilized to authenticate data content and these same schemas can be used to provide standardized import/export capabilities for sharing of metrology data across the spectrum of users. An explanation of the technical foundation including internet protocol, stateless and component based design, XML and robust database structures will be introduced. The advantages of this architecture over traditional client/server approaches will include enterprise-wide CMS implementation, minimized network bandwidth, scalability and wireless LAN applications. Utilizing this advanced technology, companies are enabling greater calibration productivity, compliance and return on investment. |