1. TDWG Infrastructure Project (TIP) Documentation Roger Hyam TDWG Executive Meeting June 1-2, 2006 - Madrid, Spain

2. What is a TDWG Standard? ABCD2 DarwinCore2 SDD TCS POSS Floristic Regions of the World Authors of plant names …

3. What is a TDWG Standard? A book (human readable document). A collection of XML and other files. A collection of binary files. A service!

4. Commonality? What is common to TDWG standards at the moment? –They all contain multiple files. Therefore need a packaging system of some kind. There is no common interface. –Introduce an interface – so that all standards can be treated the same.

5. Packaging Files must be distributed in a simple zip file. Standards may be presented using a directory metaphor. There must be a machine readable manifest (coverpage) that: –Lists the files and their roles in the standard. –Lists the relationships of the files. –Provides provenance.

6. What roles?

7. Where are we now? Strategy document has been produced and circulated. Some parts are integral with the Process document. Some parts are integral with the Collaboration Infrastructure. The strategy will evolve but core is in place.

8. Discussion Points “TDWG standards that are not available on-line should be retired.” How should the standards passed in St Petersburg be handled? How draconian can we be with human readable formats? Can we mandate XHTML? Can we standardizing services?