comments on attribute.xsd

[Peter McCartney]

on a separate note, ive been thinking about storageType. I think weve
satisfactoryily divorced this element from the issue of units, scales and
domains which now makes me realize that it properly belongs in eml-physical
and not eml-attribute. i dont know how to do this since we do not try to map
between the physical and logical sections at the attribute scale. However,
having it optional and repeatable doesnt make sense to me. my interest in
storageType is to guide my software what type of data to attempt to retrieve
( ie, should i use getString() or getByte(), etc). the only reason for
making it repeat is to accomodate cases where two physical modules were
provided. Given how much we're still messing with this stuff im not sure im
reccommending any acton - its just something that is clearly not functioning
effectively as modeled now.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Bergsma [mailto:tbergsma at kbs.msu.edu]
Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2002 10:13 AM
To: Eml-Dev (E-mail)
Subject: comments on attribute.xsd


Hi.

I just read thru eml-attribute.xsd.  

Typos:
canbe
which specify ordered...  (specifies?)
domain violoations
character (in the context of missingValueCode, perhaps character(s))
thatthe

Comments:
It looks like all attributes have accuracy, regardless of scale. 
However, only interval and ratio scales have precision.  That's okay
with me, if there is meaning to the accuracy of categorical values.

However, precision needs work.  We agreed that precision is a
statistical thing, and is pretty useless without a descriptive
interpretation.  Accuracy has a place to describe the test that produced
the value, but precision doesn't have anything equivalent.  This is
bad.  Consider, for example, that better precisions usually have lower
numeric values!  There's got to be a way to describe what the precision
means.  (Often it is the standard deviation of repeated measurements.)

Tim.
-- 
Tim Bergsma
LTER Information Manager
W.K. Kellogg Biological Station
Michigan State University
Hickory Corners, MI   49060
616/671-2337
tbergsma at kbs.msu.edu
http://lter.kbs.msu.edu
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