[DDI-ADG] Geographic/spatial elements

[Mary Vardigan]

Thanks, Wendy. I am wondering how the reusable class Universe (subject, 
geography, and time) relates to the attributes on the label (the ones I 
found in various label elements are country, language, time, date, year). 
That is, would there ever be a situation in which one would override the 
other?

It looks as if the reusable classes apply at the module and/or element 
level. In that case, would we maybe want to design a reusable class 
(Universe or something else) to hold general attributes that encompass the 
attributes on the various labels? Should label itself be part of a reusable 
class? Maybe we should review at all the generic (i.e., reusable) elements, 
like label, from Version 2.0? Again, I hope this doesn't get us too far 
afield from our subject matter, but want to advance the discussion. Also, 
in Version 2.0, I think language was available on every element as part of 
the XML syntax.

Mary

At 10:00 AM 6/8/2005, Wendy Thomas wrote:
>Geographic/Spatial elements/attributes are found at the following
>locations:
>
>Resuable Class:
>   Universe
>     SpatialCoverage
>
>LogicalProduct (both basic and nCube)
>   Variable
>     geographic [a logical Y|N switch to identify a geographic variable]
>     geogrpahicVocabulary [identifies coding scheme used ex. NUTS2, FIPS]
>
>   label [found in Variable, VariableGroup, nCube, nCubeGroup,
>DimensionVariable]
>     country [allows for the association of a country code for labels that
>differ by country - example: wording difference between UK and Germany]
>
>
>Note that the use of "country" in label limits geographic differntiation
>between labels based on country rather than a more generalized geographic
>unit. For example: I cannot use this to indicate that in Minnesota the
>Party name for the Democratic Party is Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party
>whereas in the rest of the US its Democratic Party.
>
>The use of the geographic (Y|N) and geographicVocabulary [controlled
>vocabulary identifier] is for the specific purpose of informing a program
>that this field can be used for geographic identification and the coding
>structure being used. Many files contain the same information in multiple
>coding schemes. The intent was to flag these....there are multiple ways to
>do this if you want a more centralized reference.
>
>Location of these items within the DDI-Version3-SRG_TagNames spreadsheets:
>
>SpacialCoverage:
>   sheet: REUSABLE CLASSES
>   lines: 49-69
>
>geographic and geographicVocabulary:
>   sheet: PKG LOGICAL PRODUCT - BASIC   (repeated in variable in "- nCube")
>   lines: 48-49
>
>county (within label):
>   sheet: PKG LOGICAL PRODUCT - BASIC (repeated in variable variableGroup
>and dimensionVariable in - nCube)
>   lines: 20, 52, 84, 95
>   sheet: PKG LOGICAL PRODUCT - nCube (in addition to repeated classes)
>   lines: 127, 192
>
>
>Wendy L. Thomas                          Phone: +1 612.624.4389
>Data Access Core Director               Fax:   +1 612.626.8375
>Minnesota Population Center              Email: wlt at pop.umn.edu
>University of Minnesota
>50 Willey Hall
>225 19th Avenue South
>Minneapolis, MN 55455
>
>_______________________________________________
>DDI-ADG mailing list
>DDI-ADG at icpsr.umich.edu
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Mary Vardigan
Director, Collection Delivery
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
University of Michigan
P.O. Box 1248, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248
Phone: 734-615-7908
Fax: 734-647-8200
www.icpsr.umich.edu