Ecma International

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Ecma International is an international membership-based standards organization for information and communication systems. It acquired the name Ecma International in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) changed its name to express the organization's international reach. As a consequence the expansion of the original acronym has disappeared; the name is no longer considered an acronym and no longer uses full capitalization.

The organization was originally founded in 1961 to standardise computer systems in Europe. Membership is open to companies that produce, market or develop computer or communication systems in Europe. It is located in Geneva.

1 Aims
2 Ecma standards
3 The Ecma Office Open XML formats
4 The eco declaration
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Aims

The aims of Ecma International are to develop, in co-operation with the appropriate National, European and International organizations Standards and Technical Reports in order to facilitate and standardize the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) and Consumer Electronics (CE); encourage the correct use of Standards by influencing the environment in which they are applied; and publish these Standards and Technical Reports in electronic and printed form; the publications can be freely copied by all interested parties without restrictions.

For over forty years Ecma has actively contributed to world-wide standardization in information technology and telecommunications. More than 370 Ecma Standards and 90 Technical Reports have been published, more than 2/3 of which have also been adopted as International Standards and/or Technical Reports.

Unlike national standardisation bodies, Ecma is a membership-based organization; it prides itself on the resulting "business-like" approach to standards, claimed to lead to better standards in less time thanks to a less bureaucratic process focused on getting results by consensus.

[edit] Ecma standards

Ecma International is currently responsible for several standards, including the following:

C# Language Specification ^[1]
C++/CLI Language Specification
Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) ^[2]
ECMAScript Language Specification ^[3]
Eiffel: Analysis, design and programming Language (See Eiffel programming language) ^[4]
Environmental design considerations for electronic products ^[5]
Universal 3D File Format ^[6]
Microsoft Office Open XML

Although Sun Microsystems submitted its Java programming language to ECMA, Sun subsequently withdrew the submission. Thus, Ecma is not responsible for the standardization of Java.^[7]

Ecma has also been given the responsibility of steering the first international standards for Holographic Versatile Discs, a next-generation high density storage medium capable of holding hundreds of gigabytes through to several terabytes on a CD-sized disk. Ecma expects to submit a proposed standard to the International Organization for Standardization for ISO approval, around December 2006.^[8]

[edit] The Ecma Office Open XML formats

Ecma recently has became a much better known organisation due to the activities surrounding the standardization of the Ecma Office Open XML format^[9] developed by Microsoft for office documents. The standardization process to get to an Official Ecma standard is currently performed by technical committe 45 (TC45).

[edit] The eco declaration

In ECMA standard 370 Ecma has joined forces with the Scandinavian IT Eco Declaration ^[10] organisation to put forward a guideline for informing the consumers about the environmental practises of the manufacturers of ICT and consumer electronics products.

The IT Eco Declaration includes information on the environmental practices of the manufacturer as well as product features, such as environmentally conscious design, batteries, acoustic noise, electrical safety, energy consumption, chemical emissions, substances and materials included, and packaging. This makes it easy to compare different suppliers and their products, as they all present the environmental features of their products in the same way, through a common industry standard reporting form.