The document discusses compatibility issues between OpenOffice and MS Office documents and proposes a solution called Unstructured Operation Markup Language (UOML). UOML defines a unified interface for operating unstructured documents through XML. It allows any UOML application to open any document reliably by generating a UOML document from the original then allowing new content to be appended in another application while retaining the original layout. This provides the same interoperability as paper and could help promote OpenOffice without format compatibility problems. The status of the OASIS UOML technical committee is provided.

2. Reliable Interoperation between OpenOffice & MS office by UOML Alex Wang Chair/OASIS UOML TC Chairman / Sursen Co.

9. SQL vs. UOML Unstructured Document MS Office Open Office UOML Writer SEP Docbase …… ……… UOML SQL Structured Data DB2 Oracle SQL Server Finance system ERP Accounting ……… …

12. Step 1: Use MS Office to open its document