Towards an operative view of semantic metadata

Issue title: Statistical Metainformation Systems

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Froeschl, K.A.^{; 1}

Affiliations: Institut für Statistik, Operations Research und Computerverfahren, University of Vienna, A-1010 Vienna, Universitätsstraße 5, Austria. E-Mail: froeschl@smc.univie.ac.at

Note: [1] This work has been supported financially by the Austrian Chancellor's Office under contract no. 132.900/111-I/3/92.

Abstract: Focusing on metadata referring to the meaning of statistical data in the field of Official Statistics, a data model is proposed supporting the semantic integration of different data sources. To this end, the different empirical languages of data sources are re-expressed in terms of a common theoretical concept language. Moreover, based on this theoretical data language a table specification language for describing the structure of target tables is presented in an approach to obviate the need of stating procedural derivations explicitly. Since statistical tables are considered as the elementary data structure of the proposed approach, the corresponding computation model for the process of table generation is outlined, too. Finally, the relation of this work to other metadata research, in particular to the DOSES project “Modelling Metadata”, is discussed, highlighting perhaps some of the most important yet still untackled problems of metadata research.

DOI: 10.3233/SJU-1993-10209

Journal: Statistical Journal of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 181-194, 1993