CSVW and fixed record length, multiple record length

Hello,

I'm wondering if possibilities were discussed (while the development of CSVW) to describe data with fixed record length and data with multiple records per case/unit.

The DDI Alliance developed a draft vocabulary (PHDD) on physical data description of tabular data. We compared now CSVW and PHDD. Our understanding is that CSVW is very powerful for all things described in the original scope of CSVW. It looks like CSVW could be interesting for users of the main DDI specifications. We are now hesitant to work further on the development of PHDD and to publish a final version.

The only area where PHDD has additional features is the description of data with fixed record length and data with multiple records per case/unit. I understand that this is beyond the original scope of CSVW. Nevertheless I'm wondering if it would make sense to add these features to CSVW.

Both features, data with fixed record length and data with multiple records per case/unit, are used heavily in legacy data of older days where space limitations of storage played a major role. The DDI Alliance published a couple of specifications for data that result from observational methods in the social, behavioral, economic, and health sciences. DDI is used by social science data archives, research data producers in the social sciences, and national statistical institutes (NSIs).
Archives and NSIs have still a large amount of data with fixed record length and data with multiple records per case/unit.

I'm hoping this is the right forum to raise these questions. I copied the message to the discussion forum on DDI RDF vocabularies.

Cheers,
Achim


References

PHDD
http://rdf-vocabulary.ddialliance.org/phdd.html
http://ddi-alliance.org/Specification/RDF/PHDD

DDI main specifications
http://ddi-alliance.org/Specification/

DDI Alliance
http://ddi-alliance.org/

List of main DDI Adoptors
http://ddi-alliance.org/ddi-adopters


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