The Wellsite Information Transfer Specification (WITS) is a specification for the transfer of drilling rig

Drilling rig

A drilling rig is a machine which creates holes or shafts in the ground. Drilling rigs can be massive structures housing equipment used to drill water wells, oil wells, or natural gas extraction wells, or they can be small enough to be moved manually by one person...

-related data. This petroleum industry

Petroleum industry

The petroleum industry includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transporting , and marketing petroleum products. The largest volume products of the industry are fuel oil and gasoline...

 standard is recognized by a number of companies internationally and is supported by many hardware

Hardware

Hardware is a general term for equipment such as keys, locks, hinges, latches, handles, wire, chains, plumbing supplies, tools, utensils, cutlery and machine parts. Household hardware is typically sold in hardware stores....

 devices and software applications.

WITS is a multi-layered specification:

• Layer 0 describes an ASCII-based transfer specification
• Layer 1 describes a binary-based format based on 25 predefined fixed-size records and the Log Information Standard (LIS) data-transmission specification
• Layer 2 describes bidirectional communication using LIS Comment records
• Layer 2b describes buffering of data
• Layer 4 extends the previous layers to use a different data exchange format, RP66

Though still in active use as of 2008, the specification has been superseded by the XML-based WITSML.