[DDI-users] Improving the DDI Web Site

Joachim Wackerow wackerow at zuma-mannheim.de
Thu Jun 23 05:56:15 EDT 2005


Hi Matthew,

Here are some ideas for improving the DDI Web Site.


Documentation should be easier to find, now the path is: Users 
information -> DTD/Schema -> DDI Tag Library -> Variables Description. 
Easier and shorter: Users Information -> DDI Documentation

Documentation should be called documentation not tag library (technical 
term).

No dynamic generation of the static documentation content. Sometimes 
this is very slow.

Only the DTD/Schema and the history description should be below 
DTD/Schema. The documentation should be in a separate path.

DDI Lite is the very important subset of recommended elements. Thus if 
DDI Lite is mentioned, it should always say "DDI Lite (Recommended 
Elements)". Otherwise it could be misunderstood as a different DDI 
version. Actually DDI Lite is DDI Core.

On the DDI Lite page 
(http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/DDI/users/dtd/ddi-lite.html) the yellow 
marked elements are the DDI Lite elements. This should be documented in 
a clear way. We experienced already some misunderstanding with people, 
who were looking only on this page, not on the full DDI. They thought 
all these elements on the page are DDI Lite, because they were not 
familiar with the complete DDI.

Different formats of the documentation would be great. Perhaps I will 
provide the documentation based on the XML Schema in following formats: 
PDF (printing), Windows Help (offline use), Eclipse Help System 
(server-based with search facility). The documentation in the XML Schema 
is for this transformation the central source and should be correct.

More detailed and structured information on institutions, which are 
using DDI (for some institutions this is already realized). For new 
users it is interesting who is doing what with DDI. Display of the 
information in a structured form per institution. Description items 
could be collected by a HTML form. Descriptors like:
* name of institution
* URL of institution
* short description of the institution
* short description of the specific use of DDI
* public access to DDI documents available?
* specific URL, where DDI documents are available
* available depth of information for DDI documents (study description, 
variable description, ...)
* programmatic interface (like OAI-PMH) available for DDI documents (for 
harvesting, collecting purposes), URL
...

More detailed and structured information on DDI software (tools). 
Software plays a crucial role when using DDI. The list of tools will get 
larger in future. It would be nice to have a well documented list of 
software, so users have a first decision base. Information per software 
should be displayed in a structured form. Description items could be 
collected by a HTML form. Descriptors like:
* generation, edition of DDI documents (input)
* using DDI documents, output of DDI documents
* command-line based
* graphical user interface
* server-based software
* prerequisites (like XSL processor, ...)
* operating system
* license type (commercial, GPL, ...)
* open source, language (Java, XSL, ...)
* using which DDI version
...

Perhaps all pages on http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/DDI/ should stay on 
www.ddialliance.org, http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/DDI/ should redirect to 
www.ddialliance.org. So it could be expressed also in the URL's, that 
DDI is an alliance not a part of ICPSR.

At the presentation of the DDI 3.0 model at the last IASSIST conference 
we experienced that several people are doing extensions to DDI 2.0. But 
they didn't communicate this to the DDI Alliance. Perhaps a specific 
HTML form for extensions could help with this communication process.

Wiki would be great, this is already mentioned.

Achim
--
GESIS/ZUMA - Centre for Survey Research and Methodology
http://www.gesis.org/en/zuma/


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