We strongly believe in open data formats when it comes to storing, processing and describing information. With APS we therefore support a variety of open data formats. For storing the data of your museum, APS uses xml, which is a markup language that is both human-readable and machine-readable. It is defined as a free and open standard. The most obvious advantage of that is that you can import and export xml data directly to and from your collection database.
With regard to processing information, the batch processing feature in APS supports XSL, which is also an open standard. It allows you to transform documents in whatever way you want. XSL is also supported by the report configuration in APS, enabling you to create a large variety of reports from your database. For describing the information APS supports open formats such as LIDO, Museumdat, METS/MODS, ICONCLASS and Dublin Core. APS can create derivatives of your data in these formats and there are import/export modules available for every common documentation system. Of course, if your data is already formatted with a certain data format, you can continue to use it with APS. These data formats make it possible to connect your collection with other projects. One example for this is Europeana, a large digital archive project of the European Union. This works because APS fully supports OAI-PMH 2.0, the Protocol for Metadata Harvesting of the Open Archives Initiative.