There are two related purposes for ISM:

• The transfer of structural information between applications.
• The coordination of structural information between applications.

To provide for transferring information, ISM provides a means of defining, storing, reading and querying ISM models.

To provide for coordination of information, ISM can detect differences between ISM models, allowing you to selectively update either an ISM repository or an application’s data. This gives you control over the consistency between the two data sets.