Common Technical Architecture
All Energistics data transfer standards released in 2016 and thereafter are now built on a Common Technical Architecture (CTA) that allows for cross-functional workflows combining any or all of the standards.

Units of Measure (UOM)
Energy Industry Profile Standard (EIP)
The goals of the EIP are to:
- Realize metadata standards and guidelines which enable stakeholders in the energy industry (“the community”) to effectively and efficiently discover, evaluate and retrieve a diversity of information resources from widely distributed repositories and collections.
- Support both proprietary data management needs and exchange of data between and within organizations.
- Leverage existing standards to encourage adoption within the community and integration into the business and exploit existing organizational resources needed for governance and long-term maintenance.
Energistics Package Conventions (EPC)
When bringing together large amounts of data spread over many files, for the purpose of transmittal, there is a need to ensure that at the receiving end the collection of files is complete. It is also important to retain vital information on the relationships between the many data objects across all the files. To ensure these goals could be achieved, Energistics built an industry-specific standard based on the Open Packaging Conventions (OPC). OPC leverages the widely used ZIP file structure and was originally created by Microsoft. OPC is now an open standard supported by various standards organizations.
The basic characteristics of an OPC package are:
- It is a ZIP archive containing various files called parts with different (informed) content.
- It may be documented by means of metadata called core properties.
Relationships between parts are formally described, and where applicable these can also invoke external resources. This means that relationships can actually point outside the package, which includes a file on a Web or file server, a Web service address, or almost anything that can be described by a URL.
Energistics has adopted all of these OPC practices and adapted them to meet the needs of its data-exchange standards, beginning with RESQML V2.0.
- This tailoring of OPC is referred to as the Energistics Packaging Conventions (EPC).
- The resulting package that contains all of the component files is referred to as an EPC file (or sometimes an Energistics package).
EPC is currently used for the transfer of RESQML project datasets and for DAS data in PRODML.
Common Objects
The Common Technical Architecture includes many objects that are shared by the different standards, simplifying the sharing of objects across the different domains. More information on common objects can be found in the documentation system Energistics Online here.
PWLS v3.0
The Practical Well Log Standards v3.0 was released in March 2021. It can be accessed here.
Comprehensive information on PWLS can be found here.
Further Reading
Case Histories
Publications covering real-life applications of the COMMON TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE standard to solve business problems and increase efficiency.Case Histories
Publications covering real-life applications of the COMMON TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE standard to solve business problems and increase efficiency.
Events & Training
Find out when and where COMMON TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE will be part of an industry events technical program. Look at schedule for our webinars and training courses.Events & Training
Find out when and where COMMON TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE will be part of an industry events technical program.
Look at schedule for our webinars and training courses.
Developer Resources
We have a number of tools and information to help you develop COMMON TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE-based data transfer utilities and other applications.Developer Resources
We have a number of tools and information to help you develop COMMON TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE-based data transfer utilities and other applications.
Why Choose Us
- 110 members back our standards and ensure that they fit the industry’s needs.
- Data Transfer standards are critical to a successful Digital Transformation of the industry.
- Our use of XML allows us to leverage the schemas for self-validation, and the handling of attributes is supportive of metadata.
- Our Quality Assurance metadata ensures that users have a clear understanding of the trustworthiness of the data they access.
