[ecoinfo] Announce: EML 2.0.1 released

[Matt Jones]

The EML Project announces the release of Ecological Metadata Language 
2.0.1 (eml-2.0.1).  This minor release is backwards compatible with the 
earlier 2.0.0 release, so conversion of existing 2.0.0 documents should 
be as simple as changing the version number on the document namespace to 
2.0.1.

The EML specification and release files can be found here:
http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/software/eml/

The README for the release describes all of the changes that were made 
and  can be found here:
http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/software/eml/README.txt

Several documentation problems and errors have been fixed, as well as a 
fix to a bug with the 'inline' element that was preventing users from 
submitting data in the document properly.  Also, the 'precision' field 
is now optional, which should make it easier for some contributors to 
create EML documents when precision is complicated for their data.

Finally, there have been some significant changes to how access control 
rules specified in the document are interpreted (because the previous 
interpretation was internally inconsistent).  This new access control 
model allows EML authors to specify the overall access rules for a 
package (metadata and data), and then to override those deault rules for 
specific data entities.  So now, one can easily state that the metadata 
is publicly viewable, but access to a data table is restricted to the 
owner or a set of named collaborators.

Feedback, comments, and contributions are appreciated.  Please send them 
to eml-dev at ecoinformatics.org, or file bug reports and feature requests 
at "http://bugzilla.ecoinformatics.org".

Matt Jones
On behalf of the EML Project

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science 
Foundation under Grant No. 0225676, DEB-9980154, DBI-9904777, 
DEB-0072909, DBI-9983132, and DEB-9634135.  Any opinions, findings and 
conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of 
the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National 
Science Foundation (NSF).

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Matt Jones                                     jones at nceas.ucsb.edu
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
University of California Santa Barbara
Interested in ecological informatics? http://www.ecoinformatics.org
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