1. SISAI STATISTICAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE AND INTEGRATION
WORKING GROUP 3rdMEETING MAY 2013 ITEM Report of the SDMX Technical Standards Working Group

2. Report of the SDMX Technical Standards Working Group
2013-Q1
SDMX Technical Working Group

3. Background & composition (I)
Provides the forum for the active participation of the SDMX community in the management and development of the SDMX technical standards
Started in May 2011, with the SDMX Global Conference in Washington
20 members:
Central banks, statistical offices & international organisations
14 countries and 6 international organisations
4 continents
Representative of the SDMX community
SDMX Technical Working Group 3

4. Background & composition (II)
Reports to the SDMX Secretariat
Participants expected to provide around one person month per year for work in the TWG
Membership of a non-sponsoring organisation should normally not exceed two years
Chair and co-chair, with one of these coming from a sponsoring organisation, elected for one year (re-election possible)
SDMX Technical Working Group 4

5. SDMX Technical Working Group
Tasks
Focuses on improving and extending the SDMX Technical Standards
Owns the public SDMX technical standards issues list
Reviews the technical standards issues list and decides on priorities for working on reported issues
Works with the appropriate external SDMX consultants to prepare a proposal for a revised version of the standard to be approved by the SDMX sponsors
Oversees a set of SDMX reference tools
Cooperates with the SDMX Statistical Working group as required
SDMX Technical Working Group 5

6. SDMX Technical Working Group
Working methods
Meetings: 05/2011 (Washington), 10/2011 (Frankfurt), 06/2012 (Rome), 12/2012 (Paris)
Teleconferences
Web-based platform (eBIS) s
SDMX Technical Working Group 6

7. SDMX Technical Working Group
Work programme
List of issues collected from the community (including leftovers from the SDMX 2.1 revision process)
TWG voted for the issues with the highest priorities in May 2011
Part of the SDMX action plan
SDMX Technical Working Group 7

8. Work programme: Global registry (I)
Wish to have a central location where statistical metadata are made available to the community:
SDMX concepts, codelists and top-level agencies
Internationally agreed DSDs (e.g.: BPM6)
Other metadata maintained by members of the SDMX community
=> Need to deploy an SDMX Global registry available for use by the SDMX community
SDMX Technical Working Group 8

9. Work programme: Global registry (II)
Delivered so far:
User requirements for the SDMX Global Registry
Proposed hosting solutions for the SDMX Global Registry (cloud hosting)
Operational aspects of the SDMX Global Registry
Recommended registry implementation (Fusion Registry, from Metadata Technology Ltd., UK)
Global registry currently being tested by the TWG
Deadline: 30/09/2013
SDMX Technical Working Group 9

10. Work programme: SDMX IT tools strategy 1
SDMX tools individually developed over the years and made available (mostly for free) to the SDMX community.
But most of them are not interoperable.
Proposed to address the issue by
Adopting normative interfaces
Providing tools to check the compatibility of tools against these interfaces
Offering reference implementations
In addition, a new document, targeting IT architects and developers will be delivered
Deadline: 30/10/2013
SDMX Technical Working Group 10

11. Work programme: SDMX IT tools strategy 2
Delivered so far:
Identified a list of main building blocks for which it would be feasible to define “normative” interfaces
Work has been proceeding with the direct support of Eurostat
working in defining the normative interface as part of the reengineering of all its SDMX tools
providing input to a web portal where documentation, programmers guide, code repository etc will be available
publishing the documentation in its final form as both pdf and a linked document in HTML
results will be expected in the first semester 2013
SDMX Technical Working Group 11

12. Work programme: Security guidelines for registry and web services
Security-related questions left out of version 2.1 of the SDMX web services guidelines and of the SDMX registry guidelines.
Need to cover issues such as authentication, authorisation, confidentiality, integrity, non-repudiation and accessibility
Covers the needs of the SDMX Global Registry
Updated Section 07 made available for review on the SDMX users forum
Work is finished
SDMX Technical Working Group 12

13. Work programme: Improved technical documentation
Often pointed out that the SDMX technical documentation is complex.
Need to suggest possible improvements and enhancements.
Focused on SDMX 2.1
Deliverables:
Updated user guide
XML Schema Documentation
Schema/Model mapping
Deadline: 30/06/2013
SDMX Technical Working Group 13

14. Work programme: SDMX and other technical standards
Contribute in the discussion of the possible interaction of SDMX and other standard (such as DDI) in the matters of dealing with micro-data and supporting the phases of the GSBPM
Assess current capabilities (SDMX vs. other standards)
Suggest how SDMX could evolve
Discuss the possible integration with other standards
Deadline:
SDMX Technical Working Group 14

15. Work programme: SDMX and other technical standards
Progress so far:
Use-cases collected for:
Microdata (questionnaires, registers, multidimens.)
Process phases (exchange, validation, calculation, etc.)
Analysis in progress on SDMX and DDI
Applying the standards to the use cases
Evidence of cases of incomplete support for future suggestion of possible improvements
New fields of interaction and comparison:
GSIM (UNECE)
RDF language / Data Cube Vocabulary (W3C)
XBRL standard
SDMX Technical Working Group

16. Work programme: Expressions and calculations
Goals of item 1:
Adopt a Language for Calculations and Validations, as envisaged in the package n.13 of SDMX Information Model
The SDMX package n. 13 – Transformations and Expressions – is a generic model aimed to track the derivation of data, derived from the CWM (Common Warehouse Metamodel), a OMG standard (Object Management Group) widely used in the IT field
SDMX Technical Working Group

17. Work programme: Expressions and calculations
Goals of item 2:
Make it possible to define and exchange the algorithms either used or specified for calculating data and the coherence rules, either enforced or looked-for between different data
Design the language for defining expressions (expression language) – that is the list of the operators available and their formal grammar
Design the IT formats (messages) for exchanging the definitions of the Transformations (calculations and validations defined by means of expressions
SDMX Technical Working Group

18. In addition: SDMX-JSON
Many web services nowadays return data in formats other than XML. Common example: JSON
Members of the TWG teamed up with other members of the SDMX community to propose a JSON representation of the information model
Aim to increase utilisation, ease data extraction and reduce developers burden
Improved accessibility
Requirements:
Based on the SDMX information model and RESTful API.
Optimised for the web and mobile devices
Simple, terse & solid JSON
Aim to have a draft proposal by the end of 2013-Q2
SDMX Technical Working Group

19. In addition: Reviews & Change management procedures
Provided reviews of various documents such as:
Note to the SDMX Secretariat on BPM6 DSD issues (BOP-DSD Working Group)
Guidelines for the creation and management of SDMX cross-domain code lists (SWG)
The Data Cube Vocabulary: Deploying SDMX as RDF from Existing Systems
Adopted a change management procedures for handling bug reports and minor improvements
SDMX Technical Working Group 19

20. SDMX Technical Working Group
Thank you!
SDMX Technical Working Group 20