Metadata Working Group

Working Group Projects

ISO/IEC JTC 1 / SC 32 / WG 02

Comments (WG2 BNE 030)

ISO/IEC PDTR 15452

Information technology

Specification of data value domains

This document does not apply to all data value domains as the title and scope declare. It only applies to enumerated, bounded domains capable of being fully enumerated.

Either the name and scope of this report must be changed and narrowed or the document must be expanded to treat other types of data value domains (e.g. range, rule, and other non-enumerated types) and their potential reuse.

This document is hampered by its relationship to ISO/IEC 11179 and ANSI 3.285. This is particularly troubling in the Conceptual Domain discussions. ISO/IEC 11179 does not specify attributes allowing the administrative management of the Conceptual Domain (e.g. Maintenance Organization). These are much more fully specified in ANSI 3.285. This is representative of a number of other difficulties resulting from the variance between these two documents.

If the New Work Item for review of Part 3 of ISO/IEC 11179 and inclusion of ANSI 3.285 ass part of its replacement are approved, efforts should be undertaken to harmonize this report with the revised Part 3 as well as Parts 5 and 6.

Context in the definition list should be changed to name context to allow for the narrowness of the definition.

On page 20 the name of the relationship "Data Element Relationship" is not consistent with the "Data Element Relationship" specified in Part 3.

I would suggest that the date stamping attributes be renamed from "in" and "out" to "effective" and "end"

In addition, the following editorial changes are recommended:

Add to clause 3.3: "Context is part of a name-context pair." (Fix for point 3 above)

In clause 4, replace "The model allows the combination of one or many objects in the data element concept." with "The data element concept is composed of the object class and property, and related to the conceptual domain."

In the sentence beginning "A representation includes..." change "and" to "which is composed of".

In clause 5.1.1, change "value meaning description" to "value meaning descriptor".

In clause 5.2.1, the definition of a value meaning descriptor should read: "A definition or name of the meaning of a permissible value."

In the Comments under value meaning date out, the first line should read: "This attribute, together with the value meaning date in...".

In the Comments under permissible value date out, the first line should read: "This attribute, together with the permissible value date in...".

The obligation for value domain minimum character quantity should be changed to "conditional; required if values are character data." Also, in the Comments "constant" should be replaced with "fixed".

The obligation for value domain maximum character quantity should be changed to "conditional; required if values are character data." Also, in the Comments "constant" should be replaced with "fixed".

The obligation for value domain dependency description should be changed to "conditional; required if an association exists."