Open Data Standards

I was listening to a podcast on IT Conversations and the subject of Open Data Standards came up. It is very important that OrangeHRM does not lock in its data. Users of OrangeHRM should be able to switch to another system of their choice. At the same time users of other HR applications should be able to switch to OrangeHRM easily. This prompts us to look for an open data standard for HR data.

HR-XML comes the closest. We have been considering the idea of importing and exporting data using HR-XML for some time. However, OrangeHRM is community driven. Our users define its features on our forum and on our Wiki. We have had very few request from users for HR-XML. Most users seem to prefer import and export of data using simple CSV files.

CSV import and export feature is currently in development and we plan to make this available for the first time on the open source product in January.

We would like to hear your thoughts on this.