In 2004, HIS (Herstellerinitiative Software) a consortium of German automotive manufacturers, defined a generic requirements interchange format called RIF.

[1] As the acronym RIF had an ambiguous meaning within the OMG, the new name ReqIF was introduced to separate it from the W3C's Rule Interchange Format.

In contrast to formats like Word, Excel or PDF, ReqIF allows for a loss-free exchange.

The previously mentioned implementor forum is working on such a common model and also organizes tests with tools of the participating manufacturers, to ensure future interoperability.

The containers for requirements in ReqIF are called specification objects (SpecObject), which have user-defined attributes.

Each attribute has a data type, which is one of Boolean, Integer, Real, String, Enumeration (with user-defined values) and XHTML, which is also for formatted text and embedded objects, including images.

At last, hierarchical trees create a structured view on SpecObjects, called Specifications.