Building a Modular DDI 3 Editor

Abstract

This paper is part of a series that focuses on DDI usage and how the metadata specification should be applied in a variety of settings by a variety of organizations and individuals. Support for this working Building a Modular DDI 3 Editor B Y J A N N I K J E N S E N A N D D A N K R I S T I A N S E N W I T H A L E R K A M I N , A R O F A N G R E G O R Y , A G O S T I N A M A R T I N E Z , M A R T I N M E C H T E L , M A R Y V A R D I G A N , A N D W O L F G A N G Z E N K -M Ö L T G E N ABSTRACTDevelopers at the Danish Data Archive (DDA) have built an open source DDI 3 editor using a layered architecture. The tool plays a critical role in the work flow at the DDA, providing needed integration of information. The design decisions made during development may be instructive for others building tools based on DDI 3.

DDI 3 Development at DDA

“…Developing metadata upgrade and data ingest systems built upon DDI 3 technology is key in this process. 10 To execute a software project in the current environment characterized by high complexity and uncertainty, the DDA has decided upon an open source approach aligning with the community and the standard itself. This approach brings potential collaboration, knowledge exchange and product hardening informed by the feedback of others into the end product and offers wider integration possibilities with other open products in the domain, for example, the Questasy project at CentERdata in the Netherlands 11 .…”

“…The editing suite is primarily designed for configuration and reuse/extension. The rationale for these design decisions arose out of the need for flexibility in the implementation of metadata in DDI 3 and the need to tweak system components for customized needs 20 . This flexibility makes it possible to, for example, change the XML persistence layer or how IDs are generated for identifiable DDI 3 elements.…”

Implementing DDI 3: The German Microcensus Case Study

“…Using this indexing strategy, we transformed our DDI files into a metadatabase, related to the solution described in Jensen et al, 2010. We use DBClear, which is a generic, platform-independent clearinghouse system, whose metadata schema can be adapted to different standards (Hellweg et al, 2002). DBClear has an open architecture and reusable components that make it easy to customize and to enhance depending upon the requirements in compliance with the MVC (Model-View-Controller) design pattern.…”