DEFINITION:
O·SID [o'cid] n. O.K.I. uses the term Open Service Interface Definition (OSID) to differentiate its service based specifications from the broader class of application programming interfaces. The O.K.I. architecture exposes a carefully selected collection of services. The definition of these services enforces a programming model that maintains a sharply delineated boundary between O.K.I. compliant applications and O.K.I. service implementations.
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OKI publishes OSIDs, which are not quite like typical specifications. The OSIDs are a kind of conceptual API, which can be expressed in different programming languages. The bindings to these languages are interfaces (or the nearest thing to that concept that the language has). The interfaces require implementations by service providers, which are separate releases by vendors or other contributors.
In V2 (the current version) of OKI a lowest-common-denominator Java language binding acted as both language-specific binding and specification for the OSIDs. As new languages are being added, an XML expression of the "conceptual API" has been released (XOSIDs, available on Sourceforge), along with XSLT for transformation into language-specific bindings. This is the approach that is being followed for V3 of the OSIDs. Both the XML-based specification and the language-specific bindings will be part of the revision process for V3.
