[DDI-ADG] Geography and time comments

[Wendy Thomas]

My apologies for not getting this to you earlier but I was out of e-mail
access all of last week. My comments are below. I should also note that in
applying this to census geography I have found a number of minor changes
that need to be made to accommodate the geographic structures. I'm working
on this today from notes I made during the conference I was attending.
Here are my comments on Kate's questions/comments (mine are indented.

WLT
Line 4 in geography "Description" is quite simply the Dublin Core
definition of GeographicCover allowing for as detailed a description as
the creator wishes to make. Its sole purpose is to provide a "basket" to
dump into the Dublin Core basket. FGDC and other geographic systems will
take thier definition of GeographicCover from the label of the Top Level
geography.

Geography
1) Thinking through and documenting the issue we talked about in line 4
(where Description could say that the study covers 3 countries, each of
which has its own Geography > GeographyValues > GeographyName), I realized
that line 5 needed to be rewritten b/it implies that Geographic Coverage
will be described by only one geography.  So I broadened it.  I assume the
"which can also be distinguished by a Geography which does not have a
ParentGeography" would apply to each of the 3 coverage-related instances
of Geography in the 3-country scenario.  This relates to line 13.


WLT
No. There is only one top level geography. If I have 3 countries that 3
country group is my top level. If I combine the three individual countries
(level 2) I get the top level geography. The study itself defines what the
top level geography is in the same way it defines what the population
universe is. There is no .predefined. name or code for this level just as
there is not a predefined code or name if my .geography. is an area
comprised of a 5 mile circle around a specific point. Don.t change this.
It is a concept which ties into FGDC and other geographic descriptive
systems. Geographic Cover means the full extent of the geography covered
regardless of whether or not it is an contiguous area.


2) Line 18: Hate to bring up a substantive issue at this late date (some
are just occurring to me when really reading through the descriptions),
but I'm not clear on what's required w/in this group.  Is it true that
they could choose among lines 19-25 (have to put at least one, but not
all)?  If this is the case, then we'd lose the machine-actionability of
the values (b/the author could choose just to put in a GeographyName and
not a GeographyCode).
I think that I recall that we wanted authors to always insert a code for a
geography, but we would (in line 20) give them the option of pointing to
an external code list (rather than having to document each code using line
24).
Therefore I would think that at minimum lines 21 and 23 should be
required.
Does this make sense?  Is this what's needed to ensure
machine-actionability?

WLT
Not all areas have geographic names or codes (see example of 5 mile circle
above). It is correct as it is. You have the option of using as many or as
few as you wish. Our job is to make machine-actionability possible. We
cannot enforce the amount of information that is available.especially in
this case where you would be forcing people to make something up.


Time
1) Line 29, AccessRestrictionDate:

a) First I'm not sure if a controlled vocabulary for user categories is
feasible.  I think it depends upon how we think it'll be applied:
i) very generally (public, subscriber, author)
ii) might it be used for managing internal documents before they're
released? (e.g. the names of groups could commonly be proper names (e.g.
the name of a department or research group), therefore infinite).
If i I think yes, if ii I think no.  So I put in a general phrase about it
at the end.  Since Jostein is on the SRG, I say if we're not sure, pose it
as a question to them and know that he'll have input (rather than spending
much more time on it now).

b) Also on this element, I assume it'll be repeated for different user
categories and it can be applied at any level down to the variable.  I put
a note to this effect, but maybe someone w/a better XML eye can check and
make sure the other columns in the spreadsheet reflect these features.

WLT
I am not sure why you have a separate element set for access restriction.
There are elements that describe reasons, users, and situation of
restrictions. This element should only be attaching a reusable date to
that. Like the other types this could simply be a type attribute of the
date.

2) At the bottom we had a note to ourselves "Note - we need to investigate
time attributes in the variable class - Is the format sufficient to
describe the format of a time variable?"  Have we already done this?
Maybe now's not the time, but if something is undone, we should include a
note in the spreadsheet w/a question to the SRG.

WLT
This is a reusable class. Time variables will be described as variables,
not using the reusable class whose intent is quite different.

3) Do any of the lines 22-27 need notes?

WLT
These are really type attributes and can be attached to any other element.
So if a version date is attached to an element naming the creation
software or data collection software, it is the version date of the named
element.




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