Notes on Controlled Vocabularies

2014-10-24 23 Joachim Wackerow (meeting  with Knut Wenzig, Justin Lynch, Sanda Ionescu)

Current Approach of DDI Controlled Vocabularies

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• Code lists
• Classification
• Controlled vocabularies

Requirements

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• General
  • Ideally only one type of structure for multiple purposes
  • Usage of existing structures preferred if possible (like SKOS in the Semantic Web)
  • Same structure for internal representation in the model/specification and external representation. Reasoning: easy processing, same software solution, only different reference.
  • Validation of structure, keys, and possibly values
    • What should be validated: keys, values, relationship, dependency, requirement, …
    • XML Schema: what should be validated by XML parser, what in a secondary-level validation
• Simple approach
  • Hierarchy
  • Multi-lingual text for term and definition
  • As simple as possible, easy to process
• Complex
  • Requirement of items
  • Relationship of items
    • use case thesaurus
    • CV for keys, CV for values of key/value pair

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