The ISO/IEC 20944 family of standards is being developed to provide interoperability among metadata registries (11179-3), such as reading/writing attributes from/to a metadata registry.  However, the ISO/IEC 20944 series may be used generically, such as for applications that are unrelated to 11179-3 metadata registries, or applications that extend 11179-3 metadata registry attributes (attributes outside of the 11179-3 specification).

 The ISO/IEC 20944 standard is comprised of five parts.

Part 1 provides the overview, framework, common vocabulary, and common provisions for conformance.

Part 2 specifies Coding Bindings, both common provisions and particular bindings

Part 3 specifies API Bindings, both common provisions and particular bindings

Part 4 specifies Protocol Bindings, both common provisions and particular bindings

Part 5 specifies common provisions for Profiles using the 20944 family of standards.