[eml-dev] EML 2.1.0 Release Candidate 4

Wed Dec 17 17:15:54 PST 2008

Hi all -
A release candidate for EML 2.1.0 is now tagged and available as 
RELEASE_EML_2_1_0_RC_4.
Since the summer, several other features were added. Particularly, many 
elements were retyped to constrain their content, and overall, this will 
result in higher quality instance docs.

Special notes, and requests for review
1. Documentation:
a. First, see the new document "eml-210info.html". It has 2 sections: 
the first is a synopsis of changes and new features in this release, and 
the second section describes the transformation stylesheet, with examples.
b. All the areas of the schema which changed or were retyped also 
required updates to documentation, and to the pngs. Please review these 
areas in the normative docs: geographicCoverage, access, physical, 
attribute (boundsGroup). The html documentation is not under cvs 
control, but is easy to build:
ant clean init docbook docbookhtml faqhtml tablehtml docs eml210infohtml

But to save you running 'ant' and all those targets, I've made a copy 
available at
http://sbc.lternet.edu/~mob/eml/docs/eml-2.1.0/eml-210info.html
and
http://sbc.lternet.edu/~mob/eml/docs/eml-2.1.0/index.html
these will remain till they're finalized, and I'll recreate them from 
the head as needed.

2. Transformation stylesheet for 2.0.1 -> 2.1.0: please test the 
stylesheet (style/eml201to210.xsl). It has been run with 3 processors: 
Java (Xalan), the linux command line utility, xsltproc (C++), and MSXML 
(thanks, Wade). However, with the variety of authoring styles in use, it 
would be helpful to see more documents tested.
Jing and I identified only 2 situations where an instance document might 
cause a problem when transformed. Both had to do with moving access 
trees out of additionalMetadata and into distribution nodes. One will 
cause the transformation process to stop, and it prints an error 
message. In the other case, transformation can continue, but a warning 
message is returned.

All the junit tests passed, and additional test documents have been 
added.  The instructions for access using anonymous cvs checkout are 
here, and notes from the README are below.
http://www.kepler-project.org/Wiki.jsp?page=DevelopmentForKepler

Cheers -
Margaret

HIGHLIGHTS IN THIS RELEASE
--------------------------
This release addresses bugs which caused the schema to be invalid with
respect to the W3C specifications using modern validators
(e.g., http://www.w3.org/2001/03/webdata/xsv). Although the changes were 
minor,
one was incompatible with 2.0 releases, which necessitated the version
number "2.1". In the 2.0 series, the content model for additionalMetadata
included an element <describes> whose cardinality was 0..many, alongside
<xs:any>. This construct is non-deterministic, and so a child element
was added to the additionalMetadata section to contain the <xs:any> content.
Additionally, several elements of txt:TypeText required additional
definition so that mixed content could be accommodated. These errors
were not apparent with validation software available in 2004-2005, but
were brought to light more recently. Several small changes were made to
the enumeration list and unitTypes for standard units and stmml descriptions
of customUnits. Two elements in the literature schema were allowed to be
optional so that articles-in-press could be described.  The named type for
element gRing was changed to GRingType.

EML makes use of the STMML schema (stmml.xsd) for describing custom units
and describing its included list of standardUnits (unitList). The STMML
schema was also found to be non-deterministic, and the most reasonable fix
for this bug was not compatible with earlier versions. This error
was NOT related to elements used by EML (unitList or unitType). However,
given that authors of EML instance documents may have made use of other
parts of stmml.xsd, it was decided to the advance the namespace used for
stmml-related files to "stmml-1.1", in keeping with the pattern of version
naming in EML. The stmml authors have been contacted.

KNOWN ISSUES (see also http://bugzilla.ecoinformatics.org/)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Some areas of EML remain problematic for particular data types, and these
are being addressed by sub-groups of the EML development group. These
will be addressed in a backwards-incompatible release in the future. Areas
of future development include:
1. use of external (or multiple) dictionaries
2. handling of ongoing data, (e.g.,use of temporal coverage elements)
3. spatial datasets and map projections

BUGS FIXED AND NEW FEATURES IN CURRENT RELEASE
(see also http://bugzilla.ecoinformatics.org/)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1.0   (numbers refer to the corresponding Bugzilla bug)
Schema changes:
1132: eml.xsd, physical.xsd: fix access rule ambiguities
2054: eml.xsd: added the <metadata> tag to additionalMetadata
1154: resource.xsd: required element offline has no required children
3480: resource.xsd, physical.xsd: nearly duplicate complexTypes, 
DistributionType and PhysicalDistributionType
3165: resource.xsd: provide a place for a url description
3227: coverage.xsd: gRing was declared as GRingPointType, is now GRingType
1019: coverage.xsd: altitudeUnits should use eml-unitDictionary
3500: coverage.xsd: restrict boundingCoordinates to realistic lat/lon ranges
1152: attribute.xsd: dateTime elements are named inconsistently; 
standarized on dateTime
2272: attribute.xsd: base types in BoundsGroup changed to xs:float
3051: attribute.xsd: missing units were added to enumeration list to 
match eml-unitDitionary
2568: attribute.xsd, entity.xsd: inconsistent naming of methods 
elements, standardized to <methods>
2703: text.xsd: refined element declarations in txt:TextType for para, 
section; added ulink, citetitle
3163: literature.xsd: cardinality of volume and pageRange is now 0..1
3164: literature.xsd: literature needs a contact tree
3445: stmml.xsd: non-deterministic
2083: stmml.xsd: dimension 'current' was wrongly entered as 'charge'

Parser :
3232: EML parser should use full-schema-checking

Stylesheets :
3508: create a stylesheet for EML2.0.x to EML 2.1.0
3590: eml-documentation stylesheet problem with derived content.
2048: param attributeindex defined twice in eml-settings.xsl
2085: Access ontrol rules adapted for 2.0.1 and 2.1 (currently not shown)
2147: EML Stylesheet problem with web address URL's
2226: EML2 style sheet double the number of complex delimited f...

-- 

========================
Margaret O'Brien
Information Management
Santa Barbara Coastal LTER 
Marine Science Institute
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA  93106-6150

805-893-2071
mob at msi.ucsb.edu
http://sbc.lternet.edu
========================

-- 

========================
Margaret O'Brien
Information Management
Santa Barbara Coastal LTER 
Marine Science Institute
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA  93106-6150

805-893-2071
mob at icess.ucsb.edu
http://sbc.lternet.edu
========================