Two major forces contributed to the creation of the User Group:

• The rise of the Internet and the ease by which we transmit data of all types – including database data – has made easy interoperability of Database systems even more important than before. Anyone from a one-person shop to a large corporation could use the Internet or corporate intranets to transmit, view, print and update database files, or to query those files for the information within them. Thus, the already-existing perception that open standards are better for computer users grew to the force of an imperative as the sharing of files grew more and more common.
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• The number of database files containing valuable data keeps growing. There are millions of files in existence. The valuable data stored in these files was kept in many different proprietary structures and structures which are not readily accessible either to end users or to programs that might extract data from the files, display them, or perform other useful functions. In order to create a market demand for this capability, a number of developers are providing documentation and programming examples to demonstrate a generic method of building database structures and accessing that provides a central data resource available to many applications.

In early 1998 ASAP Telesis technologies provided the basic design of the structure and layout of an idea called OMNIBUS as part of the overall plan to help make the OpenDB Ontology  an open standard. ASAP Telesis technologies then joined with the others  to create the OpenDB Common PublicPIM Structure, and donated the diagrams and prototype programs produced by ASAP Telesis technologies to potential users for their non-exclusive use in promoting the OpenDB Common PublicPIM structure definition and layout as an open standard.

The Creators of the OpenDB Ontology are committed to maintaining the availability of OpenDB Common PublicPIM structure definition as an open standard, usable by all programs that need to access valuable database data regardless of language or platform.

Between 1998 and 2007 ASAP Telesis technologies had software created that has become known as "PublicPIM" both as a desktop application and the basis for this WEB site.  These were dedicated to the idea of OpenDB Ontology to serve as examples of how the concept can work.
The year 2006 was a breakthrough when "NEW" technology known as Rich Internet Applications became available and a new site was created to promote this new technology. PublicPIM will now register new users and spread our idea.