This short paper gives an introduction to a research project to analyze how digital documents are structured and described. Using a phenomenological approach, this research will reveal common patterns that are used in data, independent from the particular technology in which the data is available. The ability to identify these patterns, on different levels of description, is important for several applications in digital libraries. A better understanding of data structuring will not only help to better capture singular characteristics of data by metadata, but will also recover intended structures of digital objects, beyond long term preservation.
Patterns as structured methods of describing good design practice, were first introduced by in the field of architecture @cite_9 . In their words each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem.'' Patterns were later adopted in other fields of engineering, especially in (object-oriented) software design @cite_4 @cite_13 . There are some works that describe pattern for specific data structuring or data modeling languages, among them Linked Data in RDF @cite_0 , Markup languages @cite_5 , data models in enterprises @cite_17 @cite_7 , and meta models @cite_1 @cite_20 . A general limitation of existing approaches is the focus to one specific formalization method. This practical limitation blocks the view to more general data patterns, independent from a particular encoding, and it conceals blind spots and weaknesses of a chosen formalism.
@cite_4 @cite_7 @cite_9 @cite_1 @cite_0 @cite_5 @cite_13 @cite_20 @cite_17
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A quick and reliable way to build proven databases for core business functions Industry experts raved about The Data Model Resource Book when it was first published in March 1997 because it provided a simple, cost-effective way to design databases for core business functions. Len Silverston has now revised and updated the hugely successful First Edition, while adding a companion volume to take care of more specific requirements of different businesses. Each volume is accompanied by a CD-ROM, which is sold separately. Each CD-ROM provides powerful design templates discussed in the books in a ready-to-use electronic format, allowing companies and individuals to develop the databases they need at a fraction of the cost and a third of the time it would take to build them from scratch. Updating the data models from the First Edition CD-ROM, this resource allows database developers to quickly load a core set of data models and customize them to support a wide range of business functions. You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language. At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people. At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment. "Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today. Chapter 1: About Metadata Models Chapter 2: Data Chapter 3: Activities, Functions, and Processes Chapter 4: Locations Chapter 5: People and Organizations Chapter 6: Events and Timing Chapter 7: Motivation Glossary References and Further Reading Index About the Author Combining expressiveness and plainness in the design of web documents is a difficult task. Validation languages are very powerful and designers are tempted to over-design specifications. This paper discusses an offbeat approach: describing any structured content of any document by only using a very small set of patterns, regardless of the format and layout of that document. The paper sketches out a formal analysis of some patterns, based on grammars and language theory. The study has been performed on XML languages and DTDs and has a twofold goal: coding empirical patterns in a formal representation, and discussing their completeness. The book is an introduction to the idea of design patterns in software engineering, and a catalog of twenty-three common patterns. The nice thing is, most experienced OOP designers will find out they've known about patterns all along. It's just that they've never considered them as such, or tried to centralize the idea behind a given pattern so that it will be easily reusable.