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Usage Board review of application profiles: criteria and procedures

About this draft

This is work in progress by the Usage Board. Please do not cite or quote.

What are the boundaries of what constitutes Usage Board review? Need to distinguish between things that affect conformance and usage guidelines that may conform but with which the Usage Board may disagree. Is there a difference between semantic conformance and modeling conformance?

End product of review should be self-contained, including short description of a profile. Questions below should make reviewer assignments explicit enough to elicit such descriptions.

Usage Board Application Profile Review Guidelines (For Review: Barcelona)

General

PROFILE PURPOSE AND SCOPE
Question Consideration
Are the purpose and scope of the AP clearly stated? The documentation must define the goals of the profile in terms of the community of interest as well as the profile's purpose in terms of the resources to be described and the functionality it intends to support.
The documentation should describe the context in which the application profile is used or is likely to be used.
The documentation should identify the organizations or individuals involved in the profile's development as well as any arrangements, policies, or intentions regarding the future development and maintenance of the profile.
FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS
Question Consideration
Are the functional requirements of the AP stated, and does the AP conform to the stated functional requirements? The documentation must define the functional requirements of the profile. These requirements should be framed in terms of general functions such as (but not limited to) discovery, identification, and selection as well as in a more detailed enumeration of specific functionality enabled by the profile under each of the more general functions.
The documentation must demonstrate that the application profile conforms to the stated functional requirements.
APPLICATION DATA MODEL
Question Consideration
Does the AP provide a coherent data model? The Application profile must provide a data model that describes the profile's entities and the relationships among those entities. The data model may be illustrated in a graphical form (e.g., as one or more UML class diagrams) or set out in text.
The application profile may be based on an externally expressed data model. In such a case, the application profile must clearly identify: (1) the external data model used; and (2) any points of divergence of the profile from that external model. Additional information deemed necessary to clarify the relationship between the profile and the external model should be provided.
DOCUMENTATION OF TERMS
Question Consideration
Are the terms used in the profile well described? The elements used to describe the terms in the AP should conform to the [WWW]CEN Guidelines in substance and labeling.
The AP should use all appropriate descriptive elements to identify a term's definitional attributes, identifying attributes, relational attributes, and constraints.
Are constraints used consistently across the AP terms? The AP should use obligation, condition, data type, and occurrence in a manner consistent with the functional requirements of the AP.
Do the recommended encoding schemes exist? The recommended encoding schemes should exist and be declared in an existing namespace prior to Usage Board review.
CONFORMANCE OF INDIVIDUAL TERMS
Question Consideration
Does the term used in the AP conform to the DCMI Abstract Model? Each term used in the AP should conform to the DCMI Abstract Model. Conformance should be confirmed by means of the [WWW]DCMI Term Decision Tree.
Does the term usage in the AP represent a refinement and not a re-definition of the term used? Terms used in an AP should refine and not re-define the semantics of the term used.
Are the decisions in the AP to declare a new term as opposed to refining an existing term sensible? In creating an AP, developers are faced with the decision whether to refine an existing term through narrowed usage or to declare a new term that refines the original term. Where the AP-specific term usage solely restraints the term's value space, preference should be given to refining the original term through narrowed usage. Where the AP-specific term usage narrows the range of resources to which the term applies, the decision to create a new refining term or to use the original term restrained through a usage statement should be made based on the best interest of the community served.
Are the AP-specific encoding schemes appropriate? {SAS NOTE: I am not sure what we mean by "appropriate" or how we operationalize it.}
Are the terms in the AP-specific encoding schemes adequately defined, sensible and conformant? {SAS NOTE: I am not sure what "conformant" means in this context or how to operationalize it.}

Previous Draft and Discussions

Issues arising from the UB assessment process, Manzanillo:

Application model (is it enough to support functional requirements?) Need one person looking at both together: Does it, on its face, meeting the requirements as stated? "This is a conforming way to say it in this particular context". Should be enough information in a Profile.

In the spirit of having stand-alone document. Usage guidelines - content rules documented here. Stand-alone documents define what the content standard is, if there is one.

Process: http://dublincore.org/usage/meetings/2006/09/manzanillo/profile-cdap/2006-02-13.process.txt

Three essential criteria are: