Kevin wrote:

yes, I agree that SDD (Standard for Descriptive Data) would do - I was just looking for something a little more exciting. Cheers - k

.... I disagree :-) that "Standard for Descriptive Data"-standard would do, I therefore propose "Structured Descriptive Data"-standard. I absolutely agree with you about searching something more exciting.

There is a general name grabbing of most-general and all-encompassing names (like BioML, which is really indecent...). Since we think about the generalization from Biological to other collected objects all the time and try to avoid too specifically biological jargon, we actually have some justification following suit and grab

DescriptionML ?

(for which Google returns 1 hit, which interestingly does not contain the term, I even checked the html source...)

Gregor ---------------------------------------------------------- Gregor Hagedorn (G.Hagedorn@bba.de) Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biosafety Federal Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA) Koenigin-Luise-Str. 19 Tel: +49-30-8304-2220 14195 Berlin, Germany Fax: +49-30-8304-2203

Often wrong but never in doubt!