The Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) is an internationally reaching standards organization dedicated to reducing the costs of technology through standards. Since 1993, ARTS has been delivering application standards exclusively to the retail industry. ARTS has four standards: The Standard Relational Data Model, UnifiedPOS, ARTS XML and the Standard RFPs. It is a division of the National Retail Federation. These standards enable the rapid implementation of technology within the retail industry by developing standards to ease integration of software applications and hardware devices. ARTS offers testing services to verify that applications accurately incorporate these standards.
Hundreds of leading retailers and vendors worldwide contribute in shaping the ARTS Data Model. The ARTS Data Model is known as the information standard in the retail industry and provides a comprehensive design document containing all data elements and definitions required to support retail applications.
UnifiedPOS is a platform-neutral specification for connecting POS peripherals such as printers, scanners, and scales to the POS terminal, allowing retailers freedom of choice in the selection of hardware integration.
ARTS XML (formerly IXRetail) builds on the ARTS Data Model to develop standard XML schemas and message sets to ease application-to-application integration within a retail enterprise. There are currently 11 schemas available.
Standard RFPs (Requests for Proposal) were developed to help retailers choose the right applications for their specific business requirements. There are currently seven standardized template RFPs available for download.
Membership is open to all members of the international technology community, retailers from all industry segments, application developers and hardware companies. Membership requires a small fee, which is waived to those already members of the National Retail Federation, and an agreement to adhere to policies and standards regarding the licensing of any ARTS property.
Famous quotes containing the words association, retail, technology and/or standards:
“With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.”
—Clarence Darrow (1857–1938)
“A free-enterprise economy depends only on markets, and according to the most advanced mathematical macroeconomic theory, markets depend only on moods: specifically, the mood of the men in the pinstripes, also known as the Boys on the Street. When the Boys are in a good mood, the market thrives; when they get scared or sullen, it is time for each one of us to look into the retail apple business.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“With his brows knit, his mind made up, his will resolved and resistless, he advances, crashing his way through the host of weak, half-formed, dilettante opinions, honest and dishonest ways of thinking, with their standards raised, sentimentalities and conjectures, and tramples them all into dust. See how he prevails; you don’t even hear the groans of the wounded and dying.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)