Schema SDD_09.xsd

Provides root element. Note that the version of the SDD standard used is defined in the namespace declaration and needs no separate data element.

Note: until xInclude is sufficiently widespread implemented to combine data from different documents, terminology, descriptions, and resources must be in the same document!

Describes the application or script that produced this document. The information is transient (informs the import process, but is discarded after import). Intended for debugging purposes and to improve import quality (esp. if some generators are known to produce problematic code).

Required information defining the project itself. Refers to the entire document, (terminology, descriptions, keys, etc.)

Lists of external resources used in terminology or descriptions (persons, publications, media resources). This provides an interface as well as a cache.

= reuse of Annotation 
and ApplicationData, 
i. e. designer and 
application 'annotations'

Internal notes/management comments (not multilingual). Annotations should be displayed only in a 'designer' or 'revision' mode' and are expected to be invisible to users who only want to apply the data. They are appropriate for rough, unedited comments, but should not contain confidential information.

Application-specific data
(= extension mechanism)

Used for Agent documentation (an Agent is a person, project, organisation, or software agent). Currently used for authors, editors, contributors, and translators. Ideally it connects to an outside definition or documentation of the Agent.

This may be a person as 
well as an organisation name

Applicable only to persons

This is an information URL pointing to a homepage with further information. If the person has a truly global URN representing its name, it is expected that this is used as the ExternalID above.

A collection of AgentRefType elements, i. e. Agents forming a team like an author team.

(The xml sequence of 
elements in this collection 
is informative!)
[ATTR: ref]

Defines an element with a ref attribute pointing to an Agent (Resources/Agents/Agent)

Application specific data, providing an extension mechanism to the SDD model.

SDD conforming editing applications are expected to preserve the information of other applications when importing and later exporting data to support lossless round tripping.

Recommendation: Each application may read out its own information. Any other target information present should be preserved and output when a new document is generated. This is designed to support item potent round tripping data between two applications. This implies that no dependency between the settings and the descriptions and the terminology setting should be relied upon.

The Application element must contain application-defined element content (not further validated by SDD). It is not possible to directly store a text string (content model mixed="false").
[ATTR: name, version]

Base type; defines an element with a ref attribute pointing to Audience definitions (different data type from generic ref!)

An Audience is a combination of language (including dialect) and expertise (pupil, beginner, expert). Multiple audiences can be defined for the same language and expertise, distinguished only by their label.
[ATTR: defaultaudience]

The audiencekey attribute of this element is an arbitrary string. It is referenced in all audience specific elements (labels, definitions) to 
specify the intended audience.

Recommendation: audience keys should consist of the language code used in xml:lang plus the expertise level from 1-5 (plus a letter (a, b, ...) if a second audience for the same language and expertise level is defined).

[ATTR: audiencekey, lang, dir, ExpertiseLevel]

A concise label for the audience; expressed in the language and ability of the audience.

Further text beyond a short label; perhaps clarifying the definition of the audience. Expressed in the language of the audience.

Combines a publication resource reference with a detail location within that reference (esp. page number)

Refers to a publication as defined under Resources/Publications
[ATTR: ref]

Location within publication where the cited data can be found : Page, table, figure number, database record, html document bookmark, etc. (not the inclusive pages of the article).

Verbatim name as it appears in citation.
@@ Do we need this? @@

Creators = authors, editors or contributors. At least one of Authors/Editors is required.

Authors that have originated the content; in the sequence of importance.

Editors (see below) if present in addition to Authors.

Editors that have revised content generated by multiple authors or contributors; in the sequence of importance. In general Editors should co-occur with Authors or Contributors (which is, however, not enforced).

The sequence of Contributor Agents must be preserved during processing, but the semantics of it are defined by the authors or editors of the project: either importance or alphabetical sequence.

In addition to authors/editors, several people may have translated audience-
specific texts. 
@@Request for discussion: Translators are currently not listed on individual Representation elements. Only a general  general statement about all translations together can be made. Should this be changed? Also: should one Representation be marked as 'Original/SourceForTranslation'? Will we have something like a 'normative' version? @@

Allows basic character formatting using xhtml elements plus three semantic elements (citationauthor, taxonauthor, taxon; intended to be rendered formatted and for analysis). Note that no further formatting is supported within the semantic elements (taxon etc.).

'Emphasis' logical markup (phrase):
usually rendered italic.

'Strong' logical markup (phrase):
usually rendered bold.

Logical markup: subscript

Logical markup: superscript

Font style markup: italic markup that could not be interpreted as (preferred) either emphasis or taxon.

line break (empty element)

markup for inserted/deleted text

Recommended report rendering: italics

Author of a referenced citation. Recommended report rendering: may be either ignored or rendered as small caps

Author of a taxon. Recommended report rendering: see citationauthor 

Describes the application or script that produced this document (whether it has been authored there or not).

The information is transient (it informs the import process, but is discarded after import). Intended for debugging purposes and to improve import quality (esp. if some generators are known to produce problematic code). 

Furthermore, attributes describe whether the data contained in the document are complete or an excerpt of a larger data set.

Used for resources like geographical names or places. Provides either 
a simple free-form text, or a 
connection to an external resource.

A collection of LocalityRefType elements

Reference to a locality defined
in Resources/Geography
[ATTR: ref]

Defines an element with a ref attribute pointing to a Locality in Resources (Resources/Geography/Locality)

Extends resource connector type with optional encoded data content (esp. images embedded in xml document) and with a Type (Image/Audio/Video, etc.).

Type of medium @ To be discussed! @

An optional caption for a resource, esp. if it will be presented embedded in another document. Captions can be provided for multiple audiences.

@@ Issue: captions, even in multiple languages, may be obtained from the service provider. Even then it may be desirable to override them! Do we need two collections: InheritedCaption and CaptionOverride? This seems to be awkward whenever there is no ServiceProvider! Also, FreeFormDescription can contain a "title" only in a single language! @@

Optionally the full resource data may be embedded (as an alternative or in addition to defining a URI)

A collection of MediaResourceRef elements.

(the sequence in instance
is not informative!)
[ATTR: ref]

Defines an element with a ref attribute pointing to a MediaResource defined in Resources (Resources/MediaResources/MediaResource)

Required information defining 
the project itself.

A globally unique ID-string, distinguishing this project from all others. The value should never be changed once it has been introduced. To refer, e. g., to a character across projects, this value is combined with the key of the character. If you don't have this, it will be difficult to compare versions of projects 

Recommendation: Avoid choosing simple names that are likely to be created multiple times ('plants', 'French bees', etc.). Authors working at research institutions and expect to continue to do so, may use institutional-URI/personal or team name/project label (example: http://bba.de/hagedorn/coelomycetes). Note that this is only an identifier and does NOT help to locate any real resource on the web.

Number and date of current version

The major version number as defined by the project creators

An optional minor version number ('2' in 1.2)

An optional incremental version number to distinguish each successive revision of a project.

Publication of the current version (compare RevisionData/ InitiationDate for date of first version). PublicationDate should be missing if the current version is not yet published. 

Creators, Revision 
status, and dates of 
the entire project. 
The revision status 
refers to both 
terminology and 
descriptions.

Note: Creators 
are optional, but 
within Audience-
SpecificData at 
least a copyright 
statement for the 
project is required.

Audience-specific project 
header information

[ATTR: audience]

Many projects will have a limited geographical scope (or coverage).

Defines reference if information in the entire project came from one publication (printed or digital).
[ATTR: ref]

URL pointing to the online source for the terminology or descriptive data contained in the current xml document. WebAddress may serve an updated version of the data.

@@ To be discussed. The idea is that a project may point to a web resource that informs about details about the history of the data (previous versions or a detailed log of changes).

Optionally an image media resource containing an icon/logo symbolizing the project.
[ATTR: ref]

A list of audiences addressed in the project. An Audience is a combination of language (including dialect) and expertise (pupil, beginner, expert).
[ATTR: defaultaudience]

For natural language reporting some rules can be defined per language rather than per audience. If a rule for a language used in an audience definition is missing, applications may add a default language rule to the project data.

[ATTR: lang, dir]

Audience-specific 
project header 
information

A short, concise title. 
This does not support any formatting!

Free-form text containing a longer description of the project.

A free form text acknowledging support (e. g. grant money, help, permission to reuse published material, etc.)

Disclaimer statement, e. g. concerning responsibility for data quality or legal implications.

Not optional! At least 
a copyright statement 
is required!

A concise copyright statement

Optionally, an expanded copyright
statement may include more detailed
copyright information

Free-form text defining conditions under which the data may be distributed or changed.

To be used if data are placed under a public license (GPL, GFDL). Placing data under a public license is recommended.

Free-form description of geographic coverage of descriptions available in the current project.

Free-form text describing taxonomic groups covered by the project.

Used for resources like publications, laboratory notes, speeches, etc. Provides either a simple free-form text, or a connection to an external resource.

Defines an element with a ref attribute pointing to a Publication in Resources (Resources/Publications/Publication)

Abstract base type for connectors to resources (publications, class names, specimens, etc.). Provides either a simple free-form text, or a connection to an external resource.

Defines a service used to resolve ExternalID. This could be the URI of a wsdl-file of a web service.

Can be URI, but does not have to. Examples: "ref://x.y.fr/floras/smith/1998", "432787632", "SMI1998_DZT"

Human readable representation; this may be the only data item if no machine readable ID exists. Example in the case of a publication resource: "Smith 1998. Flora of Erehwon, Fingers Publishers." If an external ID exists, this is considered cached information and required to be present.
@@ Should this be multilingual? Difficult if external source does not inform about language! @@ Should this be called Label instead?

Global resource definitions containing URIs or actually embedded resources (e. g. encoded images).

Documentation of all persons or organisations that where involved in authoring, compiling, or editing the document.

@@@ This is just a preliminary sketch that should probably be synchronized with TDWG ABCD!
[ATTR: key]

Internal list of publication used in the project. Each publication is either described in free form text, or refers to an external data source.

Printed or digital publication
(including database source)
[ATTR: key]

Internal list of geographical locations (usually country names, but this may be on any level). Each one is either described in free form text, or refers to an external data source. The external gazetteer referred to may be the TDWG Geography standard.

[ATTR: key]

Global resource definitions containing URIs or actually embedded resources (e. g. encoded images).

[ATTR: key]

RevisionData (creators, dates, revision) for project, character, glossary entry, and description data.

Date/time when the object (project/
terminological definition/description) was initiated. Applications may initially set this to the system date, but the project authors must be able to change it to an earlier date if necessary.

Date/time when the last change was made (either in terminology or in descriptions)

Enumerated categories, which are intended to be rough estimates by the authors/editors, not exact statements. RevisionStatus refers primarily to the correctness of existing data. This includes an estimate of completeness relative to the stated scope (e. g. taxonomic or geographic scopes in the project definition). However, if the project goal is to describe the frequent species of a taxon, the project status may be 'FullyRevised' even if many species are still missing.

Audience-specific label representations (without abbreviations or natural language reporting wordings); used e. g. for concept trees or modifier sets.

Text of the normal label, 
intended for screen display 
or reports that accommodate
unabbreviated labels.

A label = collection of audience-specific label representations (without abbreviations or natural language reporting wordings), used e. g. for concept trees or modifier sets.

Audience-specific simple label representation (= without 
abbreviations or natural 
language reporting wordings)
[ATTR: audience]

Restricted to integer values from 0 to 5, indicating expertise from schoolchildren to taxonomic expert. Recommendations for interpreting and choosing the expert level:
0 = unspecified

1 = elementary school (year 1 to 6)
2 = middle school (year 7 to 10)
3 = high school (year 11 above) and general public (trying to avoid any specialized terminology or jargon)
4 = university students or (partly) trained personnel (using terminology, but avoiding or explaining problematic terminology)
5 = experts (using the full range of terminology)

This allows to define (and redefine) the value type for keys and keyrefs (except for audience keys, which are xs:Name)

Enumerated list to improve application interoperability. It is unclear whether a simple SDD list(as presented here ), or a generic MIME type support is more desirable.

RevisionStatus is applied to the project as a whole as well as to individual descriptions.

normalized string restricted to 1..255 character length (i. e. required, may not be empty string)

normalized string required to be at least 1 character long (i. e. either element/attribute may be optional, but if they are required the content must not be an empty string)

Contains a key and a generic debugkey attribute. 

Currently contains only the generic debugref attribute. The ref attribute could be defined here as well, but this would prevent adding annotations to clarify which key a ref is pointing to!