SDTL Working Group October 15, 2020

Video available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KZsHmenJiLFuJR1mQGsLL39mcNrjAsHM/view?usp=sharing

Agenda

1. Announcements
   a. Nov. 2 -- Presentation to DDI Alliance
   b. Nov. 18 -- DDI-CDI webinar
   c. Nov. 27 - Dec 4 -- proposal in preparation for session on provenance at CODATA/FAIR International FAIR Convergence Symposium
   d. C2Metadata resource page at MTNA -- "Data Transformation Recorder"

2. Update on DDI Alliance issues:
   a. Adoption process
   b. Trademark discussion

3. Change to Function Library Schema

4. Other updates?

Notes

1. Announcements
   a. Nov. 2 -- Presentation to DDI Alliance – This webinar is intended to inform the Alliance membership in advance of the vote on adoption of SDTL as a standard.
   b. Nov. 18 -- DDI-CDI webinar – This is a webinar about the DDI-Cross Domain Integration standard. One of the issues is work being done with the CODATA working group on Digital Representations of Units of Measure (DRUM). SDTL has been discussed as a way to describe transformations between different measurements for the same quantity
   c. Nov. 27 - Dec 4 -- proposal in preparation for session on provenance at CODATA/FAIR International FAIR Convergence Symposium. The session will have presentations on a number of provenance initiatives including Research Objects, ProvONE, DDI-CDI Process Model, Whole Tale, VTL, and SDTL
   d. C2Metadata resource page at MTNA -- "Data Transformation Recorder"

   • Our colleague Carson at MTNA created a web page linking to all of the tools created by the C2Metadata Project: http://c2metadata.mtna.us/

   • The tools page now has working versions of the tools that run end-to-end workflow. We are now calling those tools “Data Transformation Recorders”. The MTNA version of the recorder has several useful features, such as allow a user to add information into the DDI like a project name. The open source version of the Recorder does not have these features, but it is not dependent on proprietary MTNA software.

   • Carson and her colleague J Gager have proposed a plan to improve coordination in updates of the various components of the workflow.

2. Update on DDI Alliance issues:
   a. Adoption process: The adoption vote is planned for November.
   b. Trademark discussion: George joined a DDI Alliance Executive Board meeting about creating a trademark for SDTL. The DDI Alliance uses trademark to protect its intellectual property. Since we want people to use the DDI standards, we do not need a copyright. However, we do not want some other party to claim that they can make changes to the DDI standards. Trademark gives the Alliance a way to defend a standard from hijacking by a powerful party. We have requested the same protection for SDTL. The Executive Board seemed to be sympathetic to this request, but they may not pursue this for a while because of concerns about costs.

3. Change to Function Library Schema

   1. The last meeting of the C²Metadata Project proposed a changing the schema for the Function Library. The change involves splitting the “required” property into two properties “isRequired” and “defaultValue”. Currently, the “required” property is used for both purposes, and it is better form to have different properties for each function.

   2. George provided an overview of the Function Library for members of the WG. He showed the Function Library Editor, which is much easier to update than making changes directly in JSON. The Function Library Editor displays the mappings from SDTL to each of the source languages.

   3.  

4. Other updates

   1. George said that conversations are continuing on the two issues that we discussed at the last meeting. He did not think that a decision on these issues can be made at this time.

      1. Can SDTL support user supplied functions?

      2. Can SDTL include links to identifiers in external ontologies?

   2. Jeremy said that the identifier problem is handled well in DDI Lifecycle, and we should see how coordination between SDTL and DDI Lifecycle develops.

   3. Thomas gave an update on the work that he is doing on the Whole Tale project. Whole Tale is a way of describing workflows for scientific data. Thomas is creating software that will use SDTL to describe variable-level transformations in workflows. He is working with Craig Willis, who is implementing C²Metadata tools on the Brown Dog platform for creating SDTL scripts.