dataset and referenced accordingly. For example, image and sound files associated with a given location could be included. Model transformations and related software applications The primary advantage of SAIF was that it was inherently extensible following object oriented principles. This meant that data transfers from one GIS environment to another did not need to follow the lowest common denominator between the two systems. Instead, data could be extracted from a dataset defined by the first GIS, transformed into an intermediary, i.e., the semantically rich SAIF model, and from there transformed into a model and format applicable to the second GIS. This notion of model to model transformation was deemed to be realistic only with an object oriented approach. It was recognized that scripts to carry out such transformations could in fact add information content. When Safe Software developed the Feature Manipulation Engine (FME), it was in large measure with the express purpose of supporting such transformations. The FMEBC was a freely available software application that supported a wide range of transformations using SAIF as the hub. The FME was developed as a commercial offering in which the intermediary could be held in memory instead of as a SAIF dataset. History The SAIF project was established as a means of addressing interoperability between different geographic information systems. Exchange formats of particular prominence at the time included DIGEST (Digital Geographic Information Exchange Standard) and SDTS (Spatial Data Transfer Specification, later accepted as the Spatial Data Transfer Standard). These were considered as too inflexible and difficult to use. Consequently, the Government of British Columbia decided to develop SAIF and to put it forward as a national standard in Canada. SAIF became a Canadian national standard in 1993 with the approval of the Canadian General Standards Board. The last version of SAIF, published in January 1995, is designated as CGIS-SAIF Canadian Geomatics Interchange Standard: Spatial Archive and Interchange Format: Formal Definition (Release 3.2), issue CAN/CGSB-171.1-95, catalogue number P29-171-001-1995E. The work on the SAIF modeling paradigm and the CSN classes was carried out principally by Mark Sondheim, Henry Kucera and Peter Friesen, all with the British Columbia government at the time. Dale Lutz and Don Murray of Safe Software developed the Object Syntax Notation and the Reader and Writer software that became part of the Feature Manipulation Engine. SAIF was brought to the attention of Michael Stonebraker and Kenn Gardels of the University of California