XML Catalogs standard

The OASIS e-business standards consortium has approved XML Catalogs 1.1, defining mechanisms to allow machine processing of XML entities associated with external identifiers, so that web resources – such as files, images, stylesheets, and schemas – can be mapped to other resources.

Entity resolution refers to the procedure used by an XML processor to locate a resource or external file on the web. The processor applies the file’s labelling information (such as its system identifier and possibly a name, public identifier, etc.) to determine the actual location of the external file. This determination process is referred to as entity resolution. The resulting XML catalogue file is used to map logical names to public identifiers, remap URLs and provide a local cache mechanism for entities associated with remote resources.