[DDI-SRG] [DDI-UOG] [Fwd: FW: StatsProgs2DDI]

[Wendy Thomas]

Kate,

Up until now and actually until there is a group of individuals able to 
provide the type of support that's been asked for, TIC has been handling 
these questions. We are all on the user list and generally field most 
questions from that list. I usually answer first and tap another TIC 
member if it is in their area. The issue right now is the nature of both 
the user and the question. We want to be sure the person gets a detailed 
answer and has a contact for follow up work. This specific question 
regarded software developed by Achim. As he is on vacation, Pascal 
responded intially, I'm doing follow-up and Achim will give specific 
assistance with the StatsProgs2DDI program on his return. Monday I will be 
sending a barebones DDI 3 instance containing the information being 
gathered in the questioner's dtd.

For right now we in TIC are fine with this arrangement although we look 
forward to passing over some of this to other DDI members. There may 
always be some questions and contacts that will require the type of 
detailed knowledge of DDI content that is primarily within TIC. We need to 
work that out as a group of people who can provide support in various 
areas emerges. I'm sure this will happen as people within the DDI 
community begin to work more with the standard and apply it within 
various areas of use. Clearly we will need to coordinate this work so that 
there is consistant information coming from the DDI Alliance, but this can 
be worked out.

Wendy

On Thu, 18 Dec 2008, Katherine McNeill wrote:

> Stefan and I conferred about this; I'd be interested to hear the TIC's thoughts on this as well.
>
> We might actually say that this is something for the DDI Users list.  At this point neither TIC for UOG I believe are responsible for/charged with helping individuals use the data (TIC I understand to focus on development of the specification and UOG on outreach and usability, but neither on individual user support).
>
> Maybe that's a gap in service that we have (i.e. there is no working group charged with user support), but then again I think that for many open-source projects, because there's not a specific service provider that you're paying for support, the help falls on the shoulder of the "community," an ambiguous entity that in this case I think is best represented by the user's list.
>
> Other thoughts?
> Kate
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ddi-uog-bounces at icpsr.umich.edu [mailto:ddi-uog-bounces at icpsr.umich.edu] On Behalf Of Pascal Heus
> Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 10:17 AM
> To: DDI Structural Reform Working Group.; DDI Usability and Outreach Working Group
> Subject: [DDI-UOG] [Fwd: FW: StatsProgs2DDI]
>
> All:
> J received the email below from a group working on a DDI Perl parser. Could the TIC or UOG follow-up on this?
> thanks
> Pascal
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sandfort, Michael [mailto:Michael.Sandfort at usdoj.gov]
> Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 9:29 AM
> To: j.b.gager at gmail.com
> Subject: StatsProgs2DDI
>
> Hello,
>
> Your email address was listed as a contact for the StatsProgs2DDI working
> group. I am an economist with the Antitrust Division at the US Dept. of
> Justice. I have been working to develop a data library for some of the data
> we routinely use during investigations and came upon DDI during the course
> of that work. Before discovering DDI, I had developed something similar, but
> very minimal in scope, which accommodated my limited metadata-preservation
> needs. The programs included an XML schema for a "data dictionary" object
> and a perl script for reading metadata in that schema and generating a
> Postgres/PostGIS database from the ASCII data and data dictionary.
>
> Once I discovered DDI, I thought I would drop in the DDI schema in place of
> my own and rewrite the perl parser to read information from DDI-compliant
> dictionaries. But the new DDI 3.0 spec is *extremely* complicated. I am
> having difficulty figuring out what a data dictionary would look like which
> is both minimally DDI 3.0 compliant and still would meet my limited needs.
> The closest thing I have found is Aalap Doshi's interesting web-based tool,
> which unfortunately does not currently accommodate the information most
> critical to me -- markup describing variable names, locations in a physical
> file (position and length for fixed width data and ordinal position in
> delimited data), and data type
> (alpha/int/float/double-precision/date/point/line/polygon). I'm also looking
> at Guido Gay's tool for extracting SPSS metadata into R; but since I don't
> know SPSS at all, the tool has been less useful than I had hoped.
>
> I'm attaching the my schema, parser and a sample dictionary as examples of
> what I mean by a "simple" metadata management system. If you could point me
> in the direction of any other information which might help me make the
> schema DDI 3.0 compliant, I would be most appreciative! Of course, if I've
> sent this message to the wrong contact, I would also appreciate any help you
> can provide in routing it to a more appropriate recipient.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike Sandfort
>
> <<data_dictionary.xsd>>  <<xml2psql.pl>>  <<sod_dict.xml>>
>
>
>
>
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>

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