Analysis Part 2
- Joachim Wackerow
- Stephen Richard
- William K Michener (Unlicensed)
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Name (Working term) | Area of coverage | ISO19115 | FHIR | EML | DATS context (vocabularies) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Spatial and geographic | Information required for describing geographic information and services (e.g. ISO 19115) | EX_Extent element: generic GML coordinate geometry (includes SRS), WGS84 bounding box, or location identifier; multiple locations can be specified. Bounding box is most commonly used. MD_SpatialRepresentation for documenting raster geometries. | Location.position (WGS-84 latitude / longitude / altitude) Location.address | Coverage expressed via bounding box or using a G-Ring polygon definition; modules for describing raster and vector data; can also add address and other location info | (reusing GeoJSON) |
Temporal | Information required for describing time-based characteristics of the data (e.g. the date of publication, a time stamp) | CI_Date element associated with events (publication, process steps, maintenance events) categorized by a date type codelist; resource temporal extent can be a set of temporal locations, expressed as time instants, or intervals; time coordinates have a TRS, generally use calendar time also can use named time-ordinal eras as time instant or for bounds on duration (e.g. Jurassic, Reign of Henry VII, Paleolithic). | Datatypes date, time, datetime and instant (instant, date, time, datatime) (references XML Schema) | calendar date follows ISO 8601 Date and Time Specification or by using an alternate time scale such as geologic time | |
Contributors | People, organisations, agents, ... | CI_Responsibility associates a role (controlled vocabulary) with an individual or organization; individual can be affiliated with organization. Contributor is one of many roles that can be assigned to an agent. | People, organizations, person within an organization, role of responsible party can be defined from controlled vocabulary | ||
Process | Description of processes, workflows, transformations, ... | LI_Lineage is a set of process steps, ordered by a time stamp, source (input) can be specified, but not output; Not designed to describe general workflows with intermediate products and decision branches. | Healthcare Specific: | Project module captures research context; procedure module describes how data tables result from procedures stored in a database; methods module captures methods used to generate data | |
Provenance | (Related to process) Descriptions of the process used to create/produce/transform/publish data | LI_Lineage used for this content (see above) | Versioning is via protocol Transformations using Reference resource | Protocol module is used to define abstract, prescriptive procedures for generating or processing data | |
Vocabularies / lists / classifications | Enumerated lists of terms that may be applied to content being described. | Codelists are used in many places; the spec provides a set of 'standard' codelists that are in the xml implementation schema, but the encoding includes a codelist identifier that allows systematic use of other identified codelists. | (Can) cover a broad range of code systems, from internal enumerations to SNOMED CT, LOINC, RxNorm, ICD-10, etc. RDF supports Concept URI's. JSON and XML support the ISO 21090 CD datatype | Unit type dictionary, function type, distribution type, responsible party and role, keyword type | |
Resources | Objects being described or referenced. May include datasets, but also publications, software, code, other metadata, ... | dataset is most common; scope codelist lists all the options; use of a custom codelist would allow specification of other kinds of target resources. | Primary objects include datasets, literature, software, research protocols | Specific for biomedical datasets: | |
Datasets | Specific descriptions of datasets as primary objects | Scope can be attribute, dataset, series. | Group will be enhanced in the R4/R5 path | Dataset | Dataset |
Observation / Capture | Classes/objects that describe the processes by which data is created, generated, captured, transformed. (QUESTION: Is this the same as Provenance/Process?) | MI_AcquisitionInformation includes events, instruments, operations, in sequence ordered by time stamp. These are not designed to describe general workflows with intermediate products and decision branches. | Project module captures research context; procedure module describes how data tables result from procedures stored in a database; methods module captures methods used to generate data | same as Provenance IMO | |
Data | The logical structure of the data being described - variables, units of measurement, concepts, sample units and populations, records, datum(s), cells. (May or may not be a subset of datasets) | MD_CoverageDescription for documenting image, grid, array (NetCDF) data structures; MD_FeatureCatalogue for Entity/Attribute data structure documentation. | clinical care artifacts, some pre-defined aggregations See: Resource List | table, entity, literature, methods, party, project, protocol, resource, software, unit type definitions | Dimension |
Storage | The physical representation of the data (files, formats, locations, ...) | MD_Medium can be associated with offline distribution, Mime type can be specified in MD_Format, but only as a CI_Citation title; mime types also can be assocated with a URL in CI_Online resource but again not explicitly in a mime type field. | Media resource Attachment resource (Use Mime Type) Specification does not prescribe storage formats, names, etc | filename, size, compression, encoding methods, authentication of a file or byte stream, format of data object, information needed to parse textual entities and attributes from a data object | |
Access | Who can access the data and how | MD_Constraints for expressing security constraints, usage limitation, access limitations. No clear way to associate license; constraints can apply to the metadata record or the described resource as a whole; no capability for constraints on distributions or particular aspects of the described resource. | Out of Scope - many implementations use OAuth2 | Access constraints | |
Administrative / core / ... | Foundational classes for use in building the specification - e.g. identification, versioning, primitives | Metadata standard, language, identifier for metadata record, update date, maintenance schedule | See Foundation row on https://www.hl7.org/fhir/STU3/resourcelist.html – | Identification, versioning | |
| Extensions | MD_Extension for documenting extension content model. | FHIR supports both a constraint mechanism – subsetting possible values and a tag/value extension mechanism for adding new elements. See: https://www.hl7.org/fhir/STU3/profiling.html These fall under the general rubric of "Profile" | CategoryValuesPair |