February 2009 - tdwg-tag - lists.tdwg.org

Embedding specimen (and other) annotations in NeXML
by Hilmar Lapp 26 Feb '09

26 Feb '09

Hi Roger and everyone else involved in DwC and the core ontology, in preparation for the upcoming hackathon [1] here we've worked our way through a number of use-cases for attaching metadata to data elements in NeXML [2] in a way that is semantically defined. The results are here: http://evoinfo.nescent.org/Database_Interop_Hackathon/Metadata_Support If you can take a critical look specifically at the section on 'Specimens within collections' (http://tinyurl.com/djdby3) that'd be great. Specific questions related to that: 1) Is this using DarwinCore in a correct and/or sanctioned way? 2) Is there a TDWG vocabulary (in RDF or OWL) that has a relation for referring to a specimen record, or are you aware of another one that has this? 3) I could only find the XML schema for DarwinCore. Are there any plans for (or did I miss the existence of) a corresponding ontology defined in OWL or RDF, similar Dublin Core (which has a RDF ontology at http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1 and DCterms ontology at http://purl.org/dc/terms) . 4) It wasn't immediately clear how one would use the TDWG core ontology for doing the same thing in RDF (or OWL) - is this ontology supposed to be used yet, and are there usage examples, or does someone have a recommendation for how one would write the same example using the core ontology? I know it's a rather tiny subset of DwC that we're using here but that's only a start and one use-case. Of course, any other feedback to or suggestions for this or any of the other stuff on that page is welcome too! Cheers, -hilmar [1] http://evoinfo.nescent.org/Database_Interop_Hackathon [2] http://nexml.org -- =========================================================== : Hilmar Lapp -:- Durham, NC -:- hlapp at duke dot edu : ===========================================================

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FW: TDWG in 2009
by Kevin Richards 25 Feb '09

25 Feb '09

Hello fellow TAGers, I like the sound of Donald's mention of a "hackathon". If anyone else is keen for such a thing at TDWG 2009, then let me know. Some ideas that we could work on: - Tapir tools, services, enhancements - LSID tools, services, enhancements - LSID vocabulary work - elaboration of the vocabs, tools for working with the vocabs, ? - mash ups - semantic web integration with tdwg standards/tools Also had a few thoughts about how TAG ought to influence the the other sub groups and their discussions. A snippet from an email to Doanld... "I do like the idea of concentrating more on the developing standards etc. I feel we will have to be careful though not to end up with different groups heading different directions, or re-inventing wheels, because they are in separate discussions/sub groups. One of the main concerns here is subgroups creating models for data types that have been done elsewhere - ie the "reuse" of existing schemas issue. I do have a cunning plan though that may help (so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel :)). As this "reuse" issue is really a major concern of the TAG group, we could have members of the TAG group spreading themselves through the different discussion, making sure they are heading the same direction as other groups and reusing models, etc, where appropriate. It may help to have a short TAG "plan of attack" meeting before the main meeting to work out strategies for this??" Any thoughts? Kevin ________________________________ From: tdwg-bounces(a)lists.tdwg.org [tdwg-bounces(a)lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Donald.Hobern(a)csiro.au [Donald.Hobern(a)csiro.au] Sent: Friday, 13 February 2009 5:27 p.m. To: tdwg(a)lists.tdwg.org Subject: [tdwg] TDWG in 2009 Dear TDWG Members and Friends, TDWG 2009 will be help in Montpellier France from November 9-13. I thought I would take this opportunity to outline the activities I see as important for TDWG this year leading up to the conference this November. There are many important things for us to be doing in the lead up to the meeting. Consolidation of past work We have made much progress over the last few years in reworking our standards for greater interoperability. The LSID work and the associated LSID vocabularies have been a major part of this. These changes make it much easier to reuse TDWG standards with different technologies, to embed TDWG data elements in other structures, and to map other data formats into forms which can be interpreted as TDWG-compliant data. However this work is still incomplete. We need to formalise the vocabularies as an agreed high-level ontology or data model to support cross-project data integration. Many of our projects are awaiting a clear lead in this area. Please contact me if you are interested in leading some of this work or contributing to the discussion. One obvious example of the importance of this work comes from Annie Simpson's comments during her presentation in Perth. It should not be difficult for a group like GISIN to adopt TDWG standards and be able quickly to build a network to share data using those standards. I reiterate the challenge for us to solve this problem this year, using GISIN's requirements as a benchmark. It is encouraging to see that NCD nears the end of its public review and that TAPIR has just been submitted to the TDWG standards track. It would appear that the submission of Darwin Core is not far off either. Please help to ensure that we end up with effective standards that can be easily adopted by a wide audience. e-Biosphere 2009 The e-Biosphere 2009 conference (http://www.e-biosphere09.org/) will take place in London in June. This goals of this conference are to: * Present and discuss the extraordinary progress made in Biodiversity Informatics over the past decade, * Provide participants with demonstrations of current capabilities in this field, and * Bring stakeholders together to create a roadmap for the next decade. The main meeting (1-3 June) has a programme of invited speakers who will provide an overview of what is happening in biodiversity informatics and promote a vision for the importance of this work. These sessions will address the first and second of the goals above. At the end of the week, there will be a smaller two-day workshop with representatives from a range of biodiversity informatics projects discussing synergies and efficient collaboration (the third goal). e-Biosphere is significant to TDWG for several reasons: 1. The opening session on 2 June will present the benefits of data standards and integration, and we expect that many of the other sessions will directly or indirectly highlight TDWG work. We are also organising a booth to publicise the work of TDWG and hope that this will be an opportunity to demonstrate the value of our role to a wider audience. 2. The e-Biosphere organisers have established an "Online Conference Community" (http://forum.e-biosphere09.org/) to engage the wider community in pre-conference discussions. One of the categories (to be added soon) will be on the role of standards and tools in biodiversity informatics. We encourage TDWG members to contribute to this and to the other conference discussions. 3. TDWG will be represented in the roadmap discussions on 4-5 June. We trust that this session will help us all to clarify priorities for the next few years and will feed into discussions at TDWG 2009 and beyond. TDWG 2009 In recent years TDWG conferences have moved away from their earlier format, with significant emphasis on working group meetings, to become more of a reporting conference on the activities of TDWG-related projects. This has had some benefits, but has also in some ways weakened the organisation by reducing our focus on the core activity of developing and promoting standards. The vitality of our working groups in large measure depends on the conference providing a focus for their activity. For this reason, TDWG 2009 will be structured differently. Monday and Friday of the conference have been reserved for plenary sessions, but for the rest of the conference we plan to run three parallel (and, I hope, intersecting) streams of activities. One of these will be on the use of biodiversity informatics to support agriculture and crop diversity. Another stream will be for TDWG to initiate activity in response to the roadmap developed at e-Biosphere 2009. The third stream is still be be selected. Each stream will include a range of activities (e.g. symposia, seminars, task group sessions, hackathons) planned to address key issues and to result in real deliverables to progress biodiversity informatics in the area. We are establishing a Program Committee to plan the conference in detail and will keep you informed of progress. Best wishes, Donald [cid:669132404@13022009-14D8] Donald Hobern, Director, Atlas of Living Australia CSIRO Entomology, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT 2601 Phone: (02) 62464352 Mobile: 0437990208 Email: Donald.Hobern(a)csiro.au<mailto:Donald.Hobern@csiro.au> Web: http://www.ala.org.au/ ________________________________ Please consider the environment before printing this email Warning: This electronic message together with any attachments is confidential. If you receive it in error: (i) you must not read, use, disclose, copy or retain it; (ii) please contact the sender immediately by reply email and then delete the emails. The views expressed in this email may not be those of Landcare Research New Zealand Limited. http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz

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Ontology methods (was: Re: Embedding specimen (and other) annotations in NeXML)
by Jonathan Rees 24 Feb '09

24 Feb '09

As far as I'm aware the group with the greatest experience in ontology building - admittedly a young field - is OBO Foundry. The organizers have thought hard about good practice and community process and have practical experience with what does and doesn't work. The group says they're about biomedical ontologies, but there's nothing about their practices that wouldn't work in taxonomy-related domains. http://www.obofoundry.org/about.shtml http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v25/n11/full/nbt1346.html They are concerned with taxonomy, of course, but mostly as it relates to model organisms. Discussions about how to treat taxa have come up recently and I have told them they should look to the community that has fought these wars already... Personally I'd like to see a lot more cross-fertilization between taxonomy (biodiversity, collections, ...) and biomedical domains. For example, collections issues come up in contexts such as pathology and biological materials (plasmids etc.). Anatomy is probably another point of overlap. I'm not saying you should join, but I urge you to see if there's anything in what they do you might learn from - and vice versa. Best Jonathan Rees Science Commons

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FW: FW: TDWG in 2009 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
by Charles Hussey 18 Feb '09

18 Feb '09

As Roger's current boss, he has my blessing to attend the hackathon ;-) All the best, Charles Hussey, Science Data Co-ordinator, UK Biodiversity Programme, Department of Botany, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD United Kingdom Tel. +44 (0)207 942 5213 Fax. +44 (0)207 942 5529 e-mail c.hussey(a)nhm.ac.uk Species Dictionary project: www.nhm.ac.uk/nbn/ <http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nbn/> Nature Navigator: www.nhm.ac.uk/naturenavigator/ <http://www.nhm.ac.uk/naturenavigator/> ________________________________ From: tdwg-tag-bounces(a)lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-tag-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Blum, Stan Sent: 18 February 2009 08:04 To: ghw(a)anbg.gov.au Cc: Kevin Richards; Technical Architecture Group mailing list Subject: Re: [tdwg-tag] FW: TDWG in 2009 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] I wasn't aware that Roger is planning to go. I am really happy to have Hilmar participating in TDWG, but I'm also glad to see that Roger will be there with his longer experience of TDWG and as someone who is fully immersed in biodiversity and systematics. I wish I could go myself, but I don't think it's possible. -Stan ________________________________ From: Greg Whitbread [mailto:ghw@anbg.gov.au] Sent: Tue 2009-02-17 11:08 PM To: Blum, Stan Cc: Lee Belbin; Kevin Richards; Technical Architecture Group mailing list Subject: Re: [tdwg-tag] FW: TDWG in 2009 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] You can't go yourself Stan? You're a lot closer to the action. I notice that Roger is listed as participant and Hilmar Lapp as member of the organizing committee so we do have a couple of candidates already. greg On Wed, 2009-02-18 at 17:28, Blum, Stan wrote: > Kevin et al, > > Here is another event that TDWG should be aware of -- the NESCent > sponsored hackathon on phylogenetic (database) interoperability. > https://www.nescent.org/wg/evoinfo/index.php?title=Database_Interop_Hack athon > > It would be nice if TDWG had someone there at least to observe, in > particular if this event could serve as a model for our own > hackathons. > > -Stan > > ______________________________________________________________________ > From: tdwg-tag-bounces(a)lists.tdwg.org on behalf of Lee Belbin > Sent: Tue 2009-02-17 10:23 PM > To: 'Kevin Richards'; 'Technical Architecture Group mailing list' > Subject: Re: [tdwg-tag] FW: TDWG in 2009 > > > > Hi Kevin > > > > Sorry for the delay in responding. Been distracted with submitted > standards (a nice distraction). > > > > The TAG should act as the 'glue' between the other TDWG groups. Is the > key issue therefore the vocabularies/ ontology? > > > > I like the idea of a bunch of weasels. It would seem a good idea for > the TAG to disseminate a statement of intent as soon as your strategy > crystallizes. This would (hopefully) encourage the groups to aim in a > productive direction. > > > > I'm still working on recruiting members of the Programme Committee. > They should have a significant input to the meeting. They will be the > ones making a call to Conveners for group activities including > involvement across the themes. > > > > Lee > > > > Lee Belbin > > TDWG Secretariat > > > > > From: tdwg-tag-bounces(a)lists.tdwg.org > [mailto:tdwg-tag-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Kevin Richards > Sent: Friday, 13 February 2009 7:41 PM > To: Technical Architecture Group mailing list > Subject: [tdwg-tag] FW: TDWG in 2009 > > > > > Hello fellow TAGers, > > > > > > I like the sound of Donald's mention of a "hackathon". If anyone else > is keen for such a thing at TDWG 2009, then let me know. > > > > > > Some ideas that we could work on: > > > - Tapir tools, services, enhancements > > > - LSID tools, services, enhancements > > > - LSID vocabulary work - elaboration of the vocabs, tools for working > with the vocabs, ? > > > - mash ups > > > - semantic web integration with tdwg standards/tools > > > > > > Also had a few thoughts about how TAG ought to influence the the other > sub groups and their discussions. > > > > > > A snippet from an email to Doanld... > > > > > > "I do like the idea of concentrating more on the developing standards > etc. > > > I feel we will have to be careful though not to end up with different > groups heading different directions, or re-inventing wheels, because > they are in separate discussions/sub groups. One of the main concerns > here is subgroups creating models for data types that have been done > elsewhere - ie the "reuse" of existing schemas issue. I do have a > cunning plan though that may help (so cunning you could put a tail on > it and call it a weasel :)). As this "reuse" issue is really a major > concern of the TAG group, we could have members of the TAG group > spreading themselves through the different discussion, making sure > they are heading the same direction as other groups and reusing > models, etc, where appropriate. It may help to have a short TAG "plan > of attack" meeting before the main meeting to work out strategies for > this??" > > > > > > Any thoughts? > > > > > > Kevin > > > > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > > From: tdwg-bounces(a)lists.tdwg.org [tdwg-bounces(a)lists.tdwg.org] On > Behalf Of Donald.Hobern(a)csiro.au [Donald.Hobern(a)csiro.au] > Sent: Friday, 13 February 2009 5:27 p.m. > To: tdwg(a)lists.tdwg.org > Subject: [tdwg] TDWG in 2009 > > > Dear TDWG Members and Friends, > > TDWG 2009 will be help in Montpellier France from November 9-13. I > thought I would take this opportunity to outline the activities I see > as important for TDWG this year leading up to the conference this > November. There are many important things for us to be doing in the > lead up to the meeting. > > Consolidation of past work > > We have made much progress over the last few years in reworking our > standards for greater interoperability. The LSID work and the > associated LSID vocabularies have been a major part of this. These > changes make it much easier to reuse TDWG standards with different > technologies, to embed TDWG data elements in other structures, and to > map other data formats into forms which can be interpreted as > TDWG-compliant data. However this work is still incomplete. We need to > formalise the vocabularies as an agreed high-level ontology or data > model to support cross-project data integration. Many of our projects > are awaiting a clear lead in this area. Please contact me if you are > interested in leading some of this work or contributing to the > discussion. > > One obvious example of the importance of this work comes from Annie > Simpson's comments during her presentation in Perth. It should not be > difficult for a group like GISIN to adopt TDWG standards and be able > quickly to build a network to share data using those standards. I > reiterate the challenge for us to solve this problem this year, using > GISIN's requirements as a benchmark. > > It is encouraging to see that NCD nears the end of its public review > and that TAPIR has just been submitted to the TDWG standards track. It > would appear that the submission of Darwin Core is not far off either. > Please help to ensure that we end up with effective standards that can > be easily adopted by a wide audience. > > e-Biosphere 2009 > > The e-Biosphere 2009 conference (http://www.e-biosphere09.org/) will > take place in London in June. This goals of this conference are to: > > * Present and discuss the extraordinary progress made in > Biodiversity Informatics over the past decade, > * Provide participants with demonstrations of current > capabilities in this field, and > * Bring stakeholders together to create a roadmap for the next > decade. > > > The main meeting (1-3 June) has a programme of invited speakers who > will provide an overview of what is happening in biodiversity > informatics and promote a vision for the importance of this work. > These sessions will address the first and second of the goals above. > At the end of the week, there will be a smaller two-day workshop with > representatives from a range of biodiversity informatics projects > discussing synergies and efficient collaboration (the third goal). > > e-Biosphere is significant to TDWG for several reasons: > > 1. The opening session on 2 June will present the benefits of > data standards and integration, and we expect that many of the > other sessions will directly or indirectly highlight TDWG > work. We are also organising a booth to publicise the work of > TDWG and hope that this will be an opportunity to demonstrate > the value of our role to a wider audience. > 2. The e-Biosphere organisers have established an "Online > Conference Community" (http://forum.e-biosphere09.org/) to > engage the wider community in pre-conference discussions. One > of the categories (to be added soon) will be on the role of > standards and tools in biodiversity informatics. We encourage > TDWG members to contribute to this and to the other conference > discussions. > 3. TDWG will be represented in the roadmap discussions on 4-5 > June. We trust that this session will help us all to clarify > priorities for the next few years and will feed into > discussions at TDWG 2009 and beyond. > > > TDWG 2009 > > > > > > In recent years TDWG conferences have moved away from their earlier > format, with significant emphasis on working group meetings, to become > more of a reporting conference on the activities of TDWG-related > projects. This has had some benefits, but has also in some ways > weakened the organisation by reducing our focus on the core activity > of developing and promoting standards. The vitality of our working > groups in large measure depends on the conference providing a focus > for their activity. > > > > > > For this reason, TDWG 2009 will be structured differently. Monday and > Friday of the conference have been reserved for plenary sessions, but > for the rest of the conference we plan to run three parallel (and, I > hope, intersecting) streams of activities. One of these will be on > the use of biodiversity informatics to support agriculture and crop > diversity. Another stream will be for TDWG to initiate activity in > response to the roadmap developed at e-Biosphere 2009. The third > stream is still be be selected. Each stream will include a range of > activities (e.g. symposia, seminars, task group sessions, hackathons) > planned to address key issues and to result in real deliverables to > progress biodiversity informatics in the area. > > > > > > We are establishing a Program Committee to plan the conference in > detail and will keep you informed of progress. > > > > > > Best wishes, > > > > > > Donald > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Donald Hobern, Director, Atlas of > Living Australia > > CSIRO Entomology, GPO Box 1700, > Canberra, ACT 2601 > > Phone: (02) 62464352 Mobile: > 0437990208 > > Email: Donald.Hobern(a)csiro.au > > Web: http://www.ala.org.au/ > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > > Please consider the environment before printing this email > Warning: This electronic message together with any attachments is > confidential. If you receive it in error: (i) you must not read, use, > disclose, copy or retain it; (ii) please contact the sender > immediately by reply email and then delete the emails. > The views expressed in this email may not be those of Landcare > Research New Zealand Limited. http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz <http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/> > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > _______________________________________________ > tdwg-tag mailing list > tdwg-tag(a)lists.tdwg.org > http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag -- australian centre for plant bIodiversity research<------------------+ national greg whitBread voice: +61 2 62509 482 botanic Integrated Botanical Information System fax: +61 2 62509 599 gardens S........ I.T. happens.. ghw(a)anbg.gov.au +----------------------------------------->GPO Box 1777 Canberra 2601 ------ If you have received this transmission in error please notify us immediately by return e-mail and delete all copies. If this e-mail or any attachments have been sent to you in error, that error does not constitute waiver of any confidentiality, privilege or copyright in respect of information in the e-mail or attachments. Please consider the environment before printing this email. ------ _______________________________________________ tdwg-tag mailing list tdwg-tag(a)lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag

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[Fwd: [STDTRK] Submission Acknowledgement]
by renato＠cria.org.br 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

Dear all, Just to let you know that today TAPIR was submitted to the TDWG Standards Track. This means that it will be analyzed by the TDWG executive committee, peer-reviewed, and it will also go through a period for public comments before it can be accepted as a standard. As you see, potentially there's still room for changes, but any suggestion will be carefully discussed here with all of you before making any decision. The links should be all pointing to the latest versions of the schema and the specification. If you want to check them directly: http://rs.tdwg.org/tapir/1.0/schema/tdwg_tapir.xsd http://www.tdwg.org/dav/subgroups/tapir/1.0/docs/tdwg_tapir_specification_2… Let's see what happens next... Best Regards, -- Renato ----------------------- Original Message ------------------------ Subject: [STDTRK] Submission Acknowledgement From: Adrian Rissoné <a.rissone(a)tdwg.org> Date: Thu, February 5, 2009 3:11 pm To: "Renato De Giovanni" <renato(a)cria.org.br> ----------------------------------------------------------------- Renato De Giovanni: Thank you for submitting the manuscript, "TAPIR - TDWG Access Protocol for Information Retrieval" to TDWG Standards Track. With the online journal management system that we are using, you will be able to track its progress through the editorial process by logging in to the journal web site. If you have any questions, please contact me. Adrian Rissoné TDWG Standards Track http://www.tdwg.org/stdtrack -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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Re: [tdwg-tag] FW: Final changes in TAPIR
by renato＠cria.org.br 02 Feb '09

02 Feb '09

Hi Guido, Thanks again for your thoughts. (as you already know, I'm copying this message to the mailing list) Incremental harvesting does require some sort of "modified since" parameter used against the last harvesting date. Ideally you should also be able to get all deleted records in another step using a "deleted since" parameter. The way to achieve this in TAPIR is to define two concepts and then use them in filters if the providers have mapped those concepts. I think we shouldn't force providers to have the corresponding content, and networks should remain completely free to define their own data abstraction layers. In your case, you don't need to embed such concepts in all query templates as filter conditions, unless each query template returns completely different things. You can try to define a single query template just for harvesting. Regarding dump files, even if a provider is developed and configured to return a dump file behind certain service calls, there may be lots of other queries that can return almost all records. For this reason providers may still want to limit the number of records that can be returned and advertise this limitation through capabilities, so the situation can get a bit confusing for clients. I still think it makes more sense to simply allow providers to declare dump files separately. Please note that this would be an optional feature, so you're totally free to decide whether you want to implement it or not. Regarding the dump format, I'm certainly happy to leave it open to any option that makes sense. Thanks again, -- Renato > Hi Renato, > > that whole thing sounds good to me, just two comments: > > In order to facilitate incremental updates (which I am in absolute favor > of), each query requires some sort of a timestamp parameter for > specifying the maximum age of the data to return as an incremental > update, some sort of "modified_since" parameter. This should become an > inherently permitted part of every query then, without having to define > it in each template. > > Using a dump file should be up to the individual TAPIR providers, since > it easily hides behind the web front-end. That file just needs to > contain what querying the database would return anyway, as sort of a > file based cache. Returning the dump instead of querying the database > can be done either completely inside the TAPIR provider (invisible to > the client), or using a redirect (possible one generated dynamically). > So it should not be part of the specification, imho. > If you decide, howerver, to include dumps in the capabilities, the > format should definitely be customizable, not strictly bound to XML or > CSV, because XML is overkill for some data, while CSV is too flat for > other data. How about JSON, in addition? It's a nice combination of CSVs > simplicity and XMLs power to express hierarchical content. In the > future, some might want RDF as a further format ... to be continued. In > order not to unnecessarily hamper TAPIRs acceptance, it should really be > up to the individual providers which format to use. > > So far my two cents, > Guido -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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Final changes in TAPIR
by renato＠cria.org.br 02 Feb '09

02 Feb '09

Dear all, There are just two items left on the list of possible changes before submitting TAPIR to the TDWG standards track: 1) Allow custom operations to be declared as part of capabilities. I would suggest to simply include a new custom slot for this in the schema in case someone needs to use it in the future. 2) Allow dump files to be declared. This has been discussed some time ago in the TAPIR mailing list but we didn't come to a final conclusion. Since some networks are starting to harvest data by fetching entire dump files, I think it's important to allow TAPIR services to declare any dump files that may be available. Fetching a dump file from a provider and using incremental harvesting in later interactions with the service will probably be the most efficient approach. Since TAPIR generates XML output, it makes more sense to me to see dump files in XML. However, Tim/Markus (GBIF) are proposing another format for dump files using tab/csv files together with a metafile. It should be easy to allow both options when declaring a dump file in TAPIR capabilities, but I don't think it's the role of TAPIR to define specific formats. We can probably use something like this to declare dump files: <archives> <archive format="" location="" outputModel=""/> ... </archives> Where format could be "xml" or any custom term, and outputModel would be optional (only used with "xml" format). Things like date when the dump file was generated and whether it's gzipped or not could be additional attributes, but in most cases this can be discovered through the protocol used to retrieve the file, so in principle I would not include the attributes. Please let me know if this is an acceptable solution or if you have any different thoughts. Also let me know if you have any other ideas or suggestions about TAPIR in general. This is the time. I would like to finally submit specification & schema to the standards track in the beginning of the week. Best Regards, -- Renato -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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