IAFA templates, URCs and metadata

Dave Beckett <D.J.Beckett@ukc.ac.uk> Mon, 29 January 1996 11:30 UTC

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To: urc@spam.gatech.edu, iafa@bunyip.com
Subject: IAFA templates, URCs and metadata
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 11:26:42 +0000
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From: Dave Beckett <D.J.Beckett@ukc.ac.uk>
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Hi

In a similar fashion to Jon; I have been working with IAFA templates
for 12-18 months and have been extending them for my work, to hold
the metadata on a large on-line document & software archive[1].  I
presented a paper describing the system at WWW4 in Boston last
December.

At the conference, to my surprise, I met other people using IAFA
templates for metadata: the ROADS / UKOLN / SOSIG / ... people as
well as Dirk-Willem Van Gulik from the Centre for Earth Observation.
The reason it was a surprise was that I considered IAFA templates
pretty dead, the IIIR group having disappeared and nobody pushing it
to a be a standard.  I only recently discovered the dormant
iafa@bunyip.com list.

The resource descriptions that I provide with IAFA templates are
obviously good sources for URCs but the templates have their problems
(encoding, structure) as well as their benefits (simple, concrete).
I read earlier on the URC list Ron Daniel(?) was looking for
volunteers for implementors for URC subtypes.  Is this IAFA?  If so,
should this be the current state or a more developed version?

I would also, like Jon, to add my contribution to the IAFA templates
debate w.r.t URCs and metadata and agree with most of what he says:
``IAFA templates are a simple "lowest common denominator" URC''.

Ciao

Dave
[1] See my home page http://www.hensa.ac.uk/parallel/www/djb1.html
    for papers