Campinas October 2002 CODATA / TDWG / BioCASE Unit Profile Introduction to The XML Schema Version 1.37 Neil Thomson, The Natural History Museum, London

Campinas October 2002 Origins Initiated by CODATA/TDWG in June 2001 Chosen for additional use by BioCASE in June 2002, rather than creating a separate profile Based on ABCD, current version is called CTBUP v1.37 Brief introduction followed by walkthrough in XMLSpy

Campinas October 2002 Principles maintained Strong typing used Meaningful element names used Compatibility with existing standards Rich data for “who / what / where / when” with emphasis on organism names, places and time Extensible Policy on optionality Use of attributes

Campinas October 2002 Major changes Conversion from DTD to Schema – better for data-centric documents and can use typing Darwin Core 2 compatible Removal of geology elements (for current use) Reduction of element set –Recursion eliminated –Pruning e.g. of images and references Addition of structured annotation elements

Campinas October 2002 STRUCTURED ANNOTATIONS FOR EACH ELEMENT BioCASE CODATA TDWG

Campinas October 2002 The Schema will: Deliver unit-oriented data from databases (sources) to web-based services that will integrate the data from different sources Provide a semantic definition of the data items needed for that purpose Require identification of access points, through which the data may be queried

Campinas October 2002 The Schema does not: Serve to define databases Include taxon-based information Include ecological data, except for the description of a gathering site or observation site

Campinas October 2002 RfC - Request for Comment Version 1.36 flattened into Excel file 11 extracts forwarded to volunteers Some suggestions incorporated into v1.37 for this meeting Schema is available at the TDWG Website

Campinas October 2002 Top-level structure

Campinas October 2002