Insurance data standards association ACORD and Progress Software Corporation, a provider of application infrastructure software to develop, deploy, integrate, and manage business applications, announced that ACORD has selected Progress DataXtend Semantic Integrator (SI) as its mapping and schema generation development environment for the ACORD Standards Framework.

The ACORD Standards Framework (including its information model) forms the foundation of an ACORD Enterprise Architecture. This will be used to generate future versions of ACORD standards from a common model across all lines of insurance. Insurance carriers will benefit from the consistency and robustness of a broader and common set of ACORD deliverables. The information model will allow them to harmonize information across disparate insurance domains with a single conceptual model that spans lines of business, geography, and product offerings. ACORD will be able to define and publish unambiguous maps between the new ACORD Information Model and its existing Property/Casualty/Surety, Life/Health/Annuities, and Reinsurance/Large Commercial XML standards using the common-model-based approach of DataXtend SI while integrating complex metadata. This will enable ACORD members to take advantage of their existing investment in ACORD standards while embracing the new Standards Framework.

"We selected Progress Software's solution because of its visual, metadata-driven approach to mapping complex models and schemas," says Frank Neugebauer, assistant vice president of technology for ACORD. "Evolving our existing standards development process with the ACORD Standards Framework gives us the opportunity to improve the quality and comprehensiveness of our deliverables to our members, and DataXtend SI is an important part of that evolution."