One of the most important applications of metadata is the interchange of information. The XMI is an another industry standard, which was developed to enable easy exchange of programming data over the web in a standard way. A number of companies, such as IBM, Unisys, and others have created an open industry standard that combines the benefits of the web-based XML standard for defining, validating, and sharing document formats on the web with the benefits of the object-oriented Unified Modeling Language (UML). The main goal of XMI is to avoid a variety of proprietary formats. It can either be stored in a traditional file system or "streamed" across the Internet from a database or repository.