Correlation Test Project
INTRODUCTION
Correlation
Test Project Proposal
During the Melbourne conference
the Documentation Standards Group agreed that the CIDOC Conceptual
Reference Model (CRM) should be tested in practice before it
is developed further.
Martin Doerr proposed to undertake a Correlation Test Project for this purpose.
The Documentation Standards Group agreed to bring in discussion and possibly
use the several results of this test in order to:
- Validate and correct the current contents
of the CRM
- Prove the CRM's utility in a specific
application example
- Gain experience in disseminating use
of the CRM
- Learn about the direction and needs
of the CRM?s further development
Description of the Correlation Test
Project
Several teams will volunteer to
use the CRM in one or more of their on-going or beginning projects.
Three or four applications should be included to guarantee the
appropriate generality and neutrality for a project. Each participant
will test the CRM as a means to improve correctness and efficiency
of the correlation of existing data formats, access structures
and data base schemata of his/her organization. The purposes
of testing are these:
- Formalize the mapping between existing
database schemata, access profiles, and metadata.
- Reduce the number of mappings between
multiple schemata and access profiles by using the CRM as an
intermediary format.
- Create new document structures (DTDs)
in XML format.
- Create mapping between existing database
schemata and document structures for data transfer.
Description of the Test Project process
The teams will be encouraged to extend
the CRM to meet their specialized needs, assisted by members of
the Group. The CRM approach is maximal, i.e., it can be as elaborate
as the most specialized contents to be mediated. We expect, therefore,
that each team will find that some concepts needed to do their
work are missing in the current CRM.
The actual mappings between the CRM, DTDs, access profiles, and database
schemata will be communicated among the participating teams. The teams may uncover
contradictions to current definitions in the CRM and unresolved methodological
issues. Group members will cooperate to resolve such issues and to bring them
into discussion during the Working Group meetings. The Documentation Standards
Working Group will then decide if it is appropriate to integrate the proposed
extensions and modifications into the CRM and will be responsible to do so. Comprehensive
project reports and actual mappings should be made available in consolidated
form to the CIDOC membership. However, a clear distinction will be made between
the validated version of the CRM, changeable only after the Group decision, and
the reports and mappings of the Test Project. The duration of the project should
be between 1 and 1.5 years.
Immediate benefits for the participating teams are the exchange of knowledge,
intellectual consistency between mappings from different teams, and the reuse
of parts of mappings within or from other teams. In longer terms, these mappings
will help implementers create intelligent access engines.
Many members of CIDOC have declared their interest in participation. See
the full project programm in
the Project Documents.
Group members interested in participating in this project should contact Martin
Doerr, the project leader, for details.
Martin Doerr
December 1998
For more details see
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