Standards Framework Report #1

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Standards Framework Report #1

Section 6 - Trends

6.1 Overall perspectives

The fast technological changes and the enormous growth of content on the web require a continuous maintenance and adaptation of recent metadata standards. All the standards of the Standards Framework will in the future have to be maintained and/or adapted. XML is an example of a new technology that has a major impact on current and new metadata standards. XML will become important in many standardisation initiatives in the area of metadata. XML is being developed by the W3 Consortium and is, as they call it, "a method for putting structured data in a text file". The advantage of a text file in this context is that it allows you to look at the structured data without the program that produced it. XML describes data that than can be stored, analysed, used by applications and exchanged. By using XML for designing text files the problems of for example localisation and platform dependency are circumvented. The main difference between HTML and XML, and what explains the popularity of the latter, is that HTML is a language that does not distinguish form and content while XML does.

The influence of XML is reflected in the current activities and future directions of the 21 standardisation initiatives. For example, RDF is expressed in XML. In March 2000 specification version 1.1 of the RDF has been published as a W3C candidate recommendation.

6.2 Future plans of individual activities

For BSR we did not receive a questionnaire and there is not much information about this standard available on the web.

Another platform that is considering XML is CEN TC 251. CEN TC 251 states that it will soon be published as a XML Schema. Schemas will make it possible to employ ‘Templates’ for local profiling of the standard. All CEN TC 251 standards are at the moment transformed into a European Reference Information Model. Within a few years CEN TC 251 will be an ISO/TC 215 standard.

GILS has the ambition to develop from a domain-specific into a more generic standard.

ISO TC46/SC9 is maintaining current standards and will develop others in the future.

ISO TC46/SC4 is maintaining current standards and will develop others in the future.

Version 1.1 of the IMS Meta-data Specification was published in June 2000. XML is the "first" language in which the IMS metadata will be represented.

LOM did not return a questionnaire and there is no information on future directions on the web. Currently the LOM is still in draft version, version 3.6, that is intended to become a document that can be submitted for vote as an IEEE standard.

The record formats and codes list of MARC will be maintained and the changes will be published annually. The focus will also be on increasing liaison with other standard bodies.

MPEG 4 will concentrate its efforts on standardising IPMP, building a textual representation, building a more flexible timing model, and on video coding for both studio applications and digital cinema. This is expected to be completed in 2001 although the video coding for digital cinema still has to start.

MPEG 7 is still in the developing phase and the standard is expected to be ready by September 2001.

MPEG 21 is also still under development. A draft technical report is expected to be ready early 2001 and the first specification phase is expected to be ready by the end of 2001.

NetCDF refers to the website: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/itr where unfortunately information about the plans was not displayed.

The PDS is continuously reviewing the state of the art in metadata standards, protocols and supporting technologies. If necessary the PDS will be adapted to make it more effective and efficient. Currently XML is considered as an exchange and internal processing language. The developers of PDS are also participating in the NASA interagency metadata registry development project.

The Task Force installed by EBU and SMPTE had as a main task to look forward and to make a number of fundamental decisions that will lead to standards for the exchange of television programme material as bit streams. A final report was ready by 1998. It is now up to both EBU and SMPTE to develop standards.

The VRA Data Standards Committee who is developing the VRA Core Record will the coming time be working on guidelines to use the latest version, version 3.

The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, GELOS, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC32 and CERIF did not specify any future directions.

6.3 Conclusions

XML will play an important role in the future of metadata standardisation. It provides a common language for expressing metadata and could therefore provide a basis for future interoperability between standards.

RDF is being promoted by the World Wide Web Consortium as the basis for metadata interoperability for the Web. Currently the Dublin Core is still the key element set used in the development of other metadata standards.

XML and RDF are both being developed by W3C, however independent of each other. This might cause problems in the future.

It needs to be noted that potentially important activities such as the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC32 do not have published future plans and directions.

Maintained by: UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN)
Last updated: 07 August 2001