[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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