[eml-dev] [Fwd: RE: Report from Metacat Harvester: Thu Nov 10 10:27:27 MST 2005]

[Wade Sheldon]

Hi folks,

I have a question: what was the rationale for setting the xml-schema datatype for ../attribute/measurementScale/ratio/numericDomain/bounds in EML as xs:decimal instead of xs:float? I recently encountered validation problems when creating metadata for data tables from radioisotope studies that included very large maximum bounds for some attributes (in the 10^6-10^7 range), and it turned out that display of these bounds in scientific notation was the problem.

I altered my code to force bounds to be displayed in decimal notation as a work-around, but this schema rule seems unnecessarily strict to me. Besides, ruling out scientific notation for numeric fields can also require metadata creators to include unrealistic numbers of significant digits.

Regards,

Wade Sheldon


____________________________________

Wade M. Sheldon
GCE-LTER Information Manager/SIMO Database Administrator
School of Marine Programs
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602-3636
Email: sheldon at uga.edu
WWW: http://gce-lter.marsci.uga.edu/lter/bios/wsheldon.htm