The Unified Code for Units of Measure (the UCUM) is a system of codes for unambiguously representing measurement units to both humans and machines.

The code set includes all units defined in ISO 1000

ISO 1000

International standard ISO 1000 is the ISO standard describing the International System of Units ....

, ISO 2955-1983, ANSI X3.50-1986, HL7 and ENV 12435, but explicitly and verifiably addresses the naming conflicts and ambiguities in those standards to resolve them. It provides for representations of units in 7 bit ASCII

ASCII

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

 for machine to machine communication, with unambiguous mapping between case-sensitive and case-insensitive representations.

A reference open-source implementation as a Java applet

Java applet

A Java applet is an applet delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. Java applets can run in a Web browser using a Java Virtual Machine , or in Sun's AppletViewer, a stand-alone tool for testing applets...

 is available. Also a OSGi

OSGi

The Open Services Gateway initiative framework is a module system and service platform for the Java programming language that implements a complete and dynamic component model, something that does not exist in standalone Java/VM environments...

 based implementation at Eclipse Foundation

Eclipse Foundation

The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member supported corporation that hosts the open-source Eclipse Projects and helps cultivate both an open source community and an ecosystem of complementary products and services...

.