[DDI-users] Relationship between Physical data products

Wendy Thomas wlt at pop.umn.edu
Sun Mar 6 13:28:57 EST 2011


Data Relationship describes logical records and their relationship to 
other logical records within or outside a a particular data set. Note that 
Data Relationship describes "logical" relationships and the way these 
records are stored phyiscally (in the same file, in relational data bases, 
separate rectangular files, etc.)

The data file recieved is the source data for the second data file. The 
variables in the second data file may be directly transfered from the 
first file or the result of analysis of the first file. In either case the 
variable can point to a generation instruction which either describes the 
point of capture from the first file or describes the analysis done to 
create the new variable. This is similar to taking a set of microdata and 
aggregating it (capturing the process in generation instruction) and 
creating dimension variables and NCubes of the results.

Where data relationship would come in is if the new data you are creating 
is linked to the same cases as in the original files. In that case you 
would create a new relationship between the original record and the new 
record, using say the case identifier.

As a note, Data Relationship can be used to link between waves of a 
series, between microdata and aggregate output, or between unrelated 
datasets that can be linked on geography or other identifying factor(s).

Wendy

On Sat, 5 Mar 2011, My Coyne wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I would like to use DDI to document the following data analysis 
> scenario, which is simple, but reflect the workflow.  A data analyst 
> receives a dataset with sufficient metadata that describes an 
> observation over time.  After analyzing the data, he needs to record the 
> findings with additional metadata and new data set(s) that contains data 
> points of findings.
>
> How would I use DDI to indicate the relationship between the input 
> dataset and the dataset containing the findings.  Can one use 
> DataRelationship to record the relationship between physical data 
> product?  Or DataRelationship is only used to describe relationship 
> among records and logical products?
>
> Thanks
> My Coyne
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Wendy L. Thomas                          Phone: +1 612.624.4389
Data Access Core Director		 Fax:   +1 612.626.8375
Minnesota Population Center              Email: wlt at pop.umn.edu
University of Minnesota
50 Willey Hall
225 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455


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