COMCIFS Dictionary Writing Workshop

The Dictionary Writing Workshop will provide participants with the skills to create high-quality dictionary definitions and complete data dictionaries suitable either for inclusion within the CIF/mmCIF framework or as standalone dictionaries for use within other data frameworks, such as NeXus. Participants will be guided during practical sessions towards the goal of producing a complete dictionary or set of additional definitions in a scientific domain of interest to them.

Aims

At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

• Understand the role that dictionaries play in data specifications
• Understand how datanames are stored in a variety of data formats (including "3-column ASCII"/CIF/NeXus)
• Construct a high-quality dataname definition
• Construct a DDL2/m domain dictionary potentially building on previously-existing dictionaries and/or previously-existing data standards

Participants wishing to construct a dictionary for a particular domain are encouraged to bring a wish list of the items for inclusion in the dictionary to the workshop, and will be guided throughout the workshop in constructing their particular dictionary.

Prerequisites: There are no specific requirements. In particular, no programming or CIF experience is assumed.

Chair

James Hester (ACNS, ANSTO, Australia)

Supporting materials

A handout used at the Workshop may be downloaded here. Contents include

• Components of a Data Transfer Framework
• The Relational Model
• Creating formal dictionaries
• Dictionaries for complex raw data such as images
• Appendix 1: DDLm dictionary
• Appendix 2: DDL2 dictionary
• Appendix 3: Classification and use of image data
• Appendix 4: General considerations when defining a CIF data item