TC Production Framework

DDI Lifecycle Production Framework

Legacy Production Framework

For DDI Lifecycle 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3, the published package was produced using the following steps.

1. Enter the model and documentation directly in XML schema files.
2. Write high level documentation in Word files and convert them to PDF.
3. Manage content and changes using Bitbucket.
4. Generate XML schema documentation using docflex, to provide type and property level documentation.
5. Create a ZIP file containing the XML Schema files, PDF documentation, and examples.

Future Production Framework

For versions of DDI Lifecycle after 3.3, the following process can be used. This system is already in production, but the outputs are not yet used for publication.

1. Edit the model using COGS (see http://www.cogsdata.org)
2. Write high level documentation using Markdown or RestructuredText within the COGS system.
3. Manage content and changes using Github.
4. Continuous Integration system builds the following for every change.
   
   1. XML Schema
   2. OWL 2 (RDF Schema)
   3. OMG's UML Normative XMI 2.4.2
   4. OMG's UML XMI 2.5 with Diagrams and Diagram Exchange
   5. Sphinx HTML documentation and visualizations
   6. JSON Schema
   7. C# class library with JSON and XML serialization
   8. SVG and dot visualizations
   9. GraphQL schema language
5. The continuous integration system results in a ZIP file that can be reviewed or published. Manual packaging is no longer required.

Decisions to make for the future production framework:

1. Which outputs are useful to include in a published packages?

Controlled Vocabulary Management and Publication

Colaborative Management of vocabularies

Controlled vocabularies will be managed through the CESSDA CV Service (https://vocabularies.cessda.eu/#!discover). The DDI Alliance has its own "agency" there and can register persons as editors.

All DDI vocabularies are managed by this agency and can therefore just be published by designated persons.

The CESSDA CV Service offers functionality for creating, editing and versioning/pubishing of vocabularies. It also implements a full translation framework.

Applications could make use of the REST interface for each vocabulary.

Publication on the Alliance website

The publication formats for DDI Controlled Vocabularies will be:

1. HTML with all available languages included.
2. SKOS XML with all available languages included.
3. XML with DDI FragmentInstance containing a CodeList and several Category instances containing all available languages.

The feature for information push on the publication of a new version of a CV is not yet implemented in the CESSDA CV Service. Therefore the DDI CV working group has to perform some manual tasks for bringing a published version of a CV onto the DDI Aliance website. The plan is to minimize the amount of steps. Currently this will include:

1. Call of a command line tool with the URL of the vocabulary in the CESSDA CV Service as a parameter.
2. Upload the result to the alliance webserver.
3. Update the DDI Controlled Vocabulary overview pages.

The steps implemented in the command line tool are:

1. Download of the  SKOS and HTML representation of the vocabulary. Both contain all available languages.
2. Transform the HTML representation to display just one language at a time and offer a language switch.
3. Transform the SKOS XML into DDI XML.
4. Possibly, these resulting files could be packed into a Zip file for easier upload.