Title: RE: [emergency] Naming Conventions
Another path through this mess is what
CDISC has done. The FDA published a set of rules for submitting drug
information electronically so a pharma could get its hot drug approved.
CDISC [clinical data information standard consortium] was formed from vendors, pharma
companies and others to jointly develop an implementation standard using
xml. They have defined the tree structure with controlled names.
NCI used common data elements (CDEs that I spoke about) to handle the data element
meta data, the instances of data within a specific node of the tree. The
fact that there were real world objects [forms and data on them] enabled this
project to move forward pretty quickly. I have been involved in too many
data element definition project for DOD in the past that tried to do it all and
failed miserably because real world apps and their users were not involved.
John
-----Original Message-----
From: Bullard, Claude L (Len)
[mailto:]
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2003 12:36
PM
To: 'Rex Brooks'
Cc:
Subject: RE: [emergency] Naming
Conventions
Got it, Rex.
The usual meta-meta problem: do a data design a la
abstract interface
or create a
vocabulary. I like the VRML solution to that: do both with the
encodings and
vocabularies as optional features. It's more work but one
can nail down the
semantics and give the user community a chance to
converge at the level of
efficiency most appropriate to the local contracting
situation. When
volunteer groups sit down to create specs and standards,
they should keep in mind
the problem for the actual industry of changing
horses. We're
glad to see the work being done by OASIS in public safety,
but until it shows up in
an RFP, it's just nice-to-have, Sounds Good Maybe Later,
kind of work. DOJ
can't drive it down from the top without funding it too. And
technical standards
that don't account for medium constraints don't have a
snowball's chance
anyway. Thus, we use the RFP to guide us and cost
accordingly.
I note reading through
the JusticeXML dictionary that they have wisely left
open most aspects of the
data definition (eg, loose types, loose occurrence
constraints, etc) and
stayed mainly to a labeled tree. Much easier to live
with that way.
len
-----Original
Message-----
From: Rex Brooks [mailto:]
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2003 11:48
AM
To: Bullard, Claude L (Len)
Cc:
Subject: RE: [emergency] Naming
Conventions
Hi Len,
Please see my reply to Eliot's post.
