DFDF - A Descriptive Approach to Data Standardization

Data standardization is fundamentally prescriptive; no information system can solve the data integration problem without enforcing certain rules. But the challenge remains at where the rules should be prescribed. Most existing data standards prescribe the rules over the data itself. Excessive use of such an approach, however, leads to inefficient data representation. The alternative approach is to enforce the conforming rules over the description of the data so that data itself can be encoded in any manner. By developing ontologies for describing the data format and software libraries that can understand the ontology, this descriptive approach to data standardization will provide maximal flexibility in data representation while still ensuring the data interoperability.

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