Feature #220
Add object class to system metadata
100%
Description
There is currently an attribute for "objectFormat" in the "system metadata schema":http://mule1.dataone.org/ArchitectureDocs/SystemMetadata.html, from which the object class (i.e. metadata, data or something else) can be determined, though this is a potentially ambiguous property (e.g. objectFormat="text/xml", or perhaps the data is contained within a metadata document).
Suggestion is to add a new attribute "objectClass", the values of which would be drawn from a controlled vocabulary of terms for different classes of object in DataONE.
ObjectFormat would then refer specifically to the format that the object is expressed as, and objectClass would specifically identify the referenced object as a data object or a science metadata object.
History
#1 Updated by Dave Vieglais about 14 years ago
Needs further discussion - but sysmeta is fine for current operations.
#2 Updated by Dave Vieglais about 14 years ago
This is a larger issue that requires additional discussion. Solution for now is to keep things as is and use a lookup table that maintains a list of the different types of information.
An edge case is the situation where data is embedded in EML - in such a situation, the same document would receive two identifiers, one indicating data and metadata. In this case, the ObjectFormat would be the same for both - so there would be no way to distinguish if the object being pointed to is in fact data or metadata.
#3 Updated by Dave Vieglais about 14 years ago
The current model for objectFormat is sufficient. Revisit when necessary.
