Request for Distribution
Dear Colleagues,
most probably, you have received the RfC below several times already. However, there may be many more people interested apart from those reached by the mailing lists given below. So please, do re-distribute the request in your country to user communities that may not have it yet, and in your institute to colleages who may not be reached otherwise.
Please remember to put
Biological Collection Data Standard - Request for Comment
in the subject line, so that people are able to identify duplicates.
Thank you very much
Walter
- Please excuse crossposting of this message -
Request for Comment
Dear Colleague,
The Access to Biological Collections Data (ABCD) Task Group is developing an XML Schema as a data interchange standard for unit-level data. A unit may be a specimen, culture, living organism, or observation of an organism.
The standard, intended for use in distributed query systems for unit-level databases, has reached a degree of development where the Group welcomes comments and suggestions from the wider community. The current draft of the schema, labelled CTB version 1.39, can be found at the Content Subgroup's Web-site at http://www.bgbm.org/TDWG/CODATA/Schema/ along with further information about the project and the group itself.
The profile is available as a .xsd file or as a very large HTML file with diagrams to show the structure. I may also be viewed through a special browser-based schema viewer.
The Schema is intended to provide a comprehensive basic structure and is consequently quite large and highly structured. It will be used as the standard format in which the results of a distributed query will be returned.
The Group seeks comments on the adequacy of the element set and the definition of the element's semantics ("documentation"). We would particularly value comments on where the element count may be reduced, rather than enlarged, without impairing its function.
Please would you take a look at the current draft, and send comments and suggestions to abcd@bgbm.org by the December 3, 2002.
For the ABCD Standard Editors Group J. Croft, N. Thomson, and W. Berendsohn
(Please note: this message has already been posted to Taxacom, TDWG, NHColl- L, BioCASE, ENHSIN, CETAF, BiolSyst, and VegBank lists)