December 13, 2001, Reuters, New York, NY

Next Meeting

The next MDDL working meeting will be held on January 11 from 9:00am - Noon (or beyond) at FISD's NYC office -- 5 Hanover Square, 21st Floor, NYC. The dial in number is 703.925.2410. The access code is 5747838#. RSVP to Tom Andresen. On the agenda are:

1. Technical constructs update and query (including delete/remove)

2. Development of the next product area for MDDL (specifically adding preferred equities and beginning fixed income)

3. Operational and maintenance issues (including review of change management procedures) and

4. Strategy, objectives and implementation plan for the liaison committee.

Construct Enhancements

The two major constructs for grouping data in Version 1.0 are snap for snapshot quotes and timeseries for quotes over time. The next construct areas on target for inclusion are query (the mechanism for how users would request data) and update (the mechanism for how MDDL will send data updates including delete/remove).

The Technical Committee is actively seeking volunteers to work on the new construct areas. Members should make their interest known via e-mail to Michael Atkin at FISD or James Hartley at Reuters.

Product(s) Extension

MDDL Version 1.0 covers common equities (ordinary shares), indices and mutual funds. It was released at the World Financial Information Conference in London on November 1, 2001. The working groups are now considering which product area(s) to address as part of the next phase of MDDL.

Priorities to be Associated with Resource Availability

Extensions to MDDL will be considered based on the availability of member resources that are willing to work on the development of the associated data models, glossary and technical specification. The Working Group has suggested that no new extensions/product areas should be initiated without the commitment of resources to do the work. If you are interested in extending MDDL, and willing to be involved in the process, please identify yourself via e-mail to Michael Atkin.

Equities versus Fixed Income

The preliminary discussion, based on an informal survey of FISD members, identified two likely directions for product extension. Please note that these areas are not mutually exclusive as long as resources exist to facilitate the work on multiple product areas. The first makes the case that FISD should complete the equities product domain to facilitate usage of MDDL. The second (supported by the majority of responses) makes the case that FISD should be extended to fixed income.

Completion of the equities domain would include (1) certificates, (2) depositary, (3) partnerships (limited, shared, units) and (4) preferred. Initiation of the fixed income domain would likely be organized into four independent components (1) Treasuries/Corporate, (2) Municipal, (3) Mortgage-backed/Asset-backed and CMO, and (4) all Other (including real estate investment trusts, credit card loans, car loans, etc.).

Statistics

In addition to instruments/asset classes, MDDL is continuing to explore avenues to address economic, industrial and exchange statistics. The statistics group at Dow Jones is in the process of analyzing and amplifying the initial work and we've had productive discussions with both the Bank for International Settlements and the World Federation of Exchanges on the path forward in this area.

Once again, priorities for MDDL will be associated with resource availability. We strongly encourage interested parties to both identify themselves and to make sure they participate in the meeting on January 11 in NYC.

Change Management

The release of MDDL V1.0 necessitates the creation of formal change management procedures. FISD will be working to develop a recommended change management process for review at the January 11 meeting. As an interim step, we will implement a three-part (technical, vocabulary, other) bulletin board on MDDL.org to facilitate communication.

The MDDL change management process will include:

1. Publication of the change management procedures including the definition of the type of change that will trigger a new version/specification.

2. Creation of a change management template that will create a database of changes (audit trail), identify the status of changes, identify the date of implementation and send automatic notifications to interested parties via e-mail.

3. Creation of a Change Review Committee to evaluate suggestions and determine when and how the changes will be implemented. The current review committee consists of Mike Benveniste (Fidelity), Tony Coates (Reuters), James Hartley (Reuters), and Rich Robinson (Deutsche Bank).

MDDL.org

Implementation of the new MDDL.org web site and conversion of all existing documentation has been completed. The site can be accessed via http://www.mddl.org/. Suggestions on how to improve the functionality and navigation of the site are encouraged.

The new site is organized into five core content areas:

1. Specification (contains the Schema, DTD and technical reference files)

2. Taxonomy (contains the glossary and list of controlled vocabularies)

3. Diagrams (providing a graphical/logical view of the MDDL structure

4. Samples (a link to the MDDL live demonstration), and

5. Resources (including access to spreadsheets and other working documents).

Liaison Committee

MDDL has been successful in establishing initial liaison with a number of XML-related organizations including XBRL, RIXML, IPTC, ISO 15022 data dictionary (Working Group 10), and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). We have also created a formal Liaison Committee to help manage these relationships.

The Liaison Committee is now looking for additional member volunteers to define the specific objectives of the group, formalize procedures and establish the project plan/timelines moving forward. The Liaison Committee will meet as part of the January 11 meeting. Members interested in participating on the Liaison Committee should so indicate via e-mail to John Bottega (Merrill Lynch) or James Hartley (Reuters).