unitDictionay additions made should we do a supplemental rele ase?

[Peter McCartney]

Theres a side issue here, in that numbers of anything per any unit is, as I
understand the developers of STMML, not a dimemsion. Ive been a bit vague on
where we left things like counts and proportions. 

But to the main question which seesm to be, should we make updates to
dictionary files independent of the schema versioning, I say we should be
able to. The fact that we can't is due only to limitations on how
enumerations for attribute and for spatial reference were declared in the
schema. I have dealt with this in other projects using MS access where we
isolated all enumerations in separate databases that were shipped and
updated independently, similar to how virus definitions are updated
independently from the software. To do this would require a 2.x release of
eml to change the way the simpletype enumerations are declared so that they
could be updated without requiring further changes to the eml-attribute and
eml-spatial ref schemas. 

If we're voting,  I vote yes on the procedure... I think that's a fine
review process

Im not going to vote on the second question because its not well thought out
enough yet to vote on. I think its clear enough for someone to put together
a draft solution that accomplishes what is described and that it be a
targeted for a 2.x release upon which we vote. I also think that before
releasing this, we should consider its applicability to other enumerations
that are not finite. 


Peter McCartney (peter.mccartney at asu.edu)
Center for Environmental-Studies
Arizona State University
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Bergsma [mailto:tbergsma at kbs.msu.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 8:47 AM
To: David Blankman
Cc: Eml-Dev (E-mail)
Subject: Re: unitDictionay additions made should we do a supplemental
release?


David,

Is this a call for a vote, or are the voting questions "proposed" voting
questions?  If this is a call for a vote, I vote No on the two week release,
because I want to know the answers to the discussion questions before I
agree, and because two weeks does not sound long in development time.  I
vote yes on the proposed procedure.  

Tim.

> David Blankman wrote:
> 
> Prior to the release of eml 2.0.0 we discussed adding numberPerLiter 
> and numberPerMillilter to the unitDictionary. Somehow this was not 
> done. I sent an email to the LTER information managers requesting that 
> they review the unitDictionary to see if there are any other units 
> that ought to be in the dictionary.
> 
> I have added these two units to the unitDictionary in cvs.
> 
> In previous discussions, we agreed on a policy that the unitDictionary 
> could be updated independently of a full eml maintenance release. 
> While we had talked about the idea in principle, Matt reminded me that 
> it is not that simple, because currently the unitDictionary items are 
> embedded in eml-attribute.xsd as enumerations. This means that 
> additions to the unitDictionary.xml without a modification of 
> eml-attribute.xsd is relatively meaningless.
> 
> Adding units to the unitDictionary has two parts, one easy, one more 
> challenging.
> 
> First, the easy one--what is the procedure/policy for adding units?
> 
> Proposed procedure:
> 1. Someone from the ecoinformatics community sees the need for a new 
> unit. 2. That person enters a bugzilla bug.
> 3. Someone from eml-dev enters the new unit and updates
> unitDictionary.xml in cvs.
> 4. That person requests a vote from the eml-dev group on the inclusion
> of the new unit.
> 
> Second, the thornier issue. What is the mechanism for distributing the 
> change? Matt brought up the idea of decoupling the unitDictionary from 
> EML, that is, removing the enumerations from eml-access.xsd. To do 
> this would require a new process for validating the units. One 
> possibility is adding a feature to the emlParser application to check 
> the unitDictionary.xml file.
> 
> Questions for discussion:
> 1. Should we decouple the unitDictionary from EML so that additions to 
> the unitDictionary would not require an EML release? 2. If you agree 
> that unitDictionary should be decoupled what mechanism should be 
> developed to validate units?
> 
> Voting Question:
> 1. After a two week period (time to allow for a review of
> unitDictionary) distribute a maintenance release of eml to reflect the 
> addition of  numberPerLiter and numberPerMillilter?
> 
> If you vote NO, please state your rational.
> 
> 2. I agree with the Proposed Procedure/Policy for making additions to 
> the unitDictionary. If you vote NO, please state your rational.
> 
> --
> David E. Blankman
> Database Integration Developer
> Long Term Ecological Research Network Office
> University of New Mexico
> 801 University, SE #104
> Albuquerque, NM 87106
> (505) 272-7346 / (505) 272-7080 FAX

-- 
Tim Bergsma
LTER Information Manager
W.K. Kellogg Biological Station
Michigan State University
Hickory Corners, MI   49060
629/671-2337
tbergsma at kbs.msu.edu
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