computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...

, a data definition specification (DDS) is a guideline to ensure comprehensive and consistent data definition. It represents the attributes required to quantify data definition. A comprehensive data definition specification encompasses enterprise data, the hierarchy of

data management Data management comprises all disciplines related to handling data as a valuable resource, it is the practice of managing an organization's data so it can be analyzed for decision making. Concept The concept of data management emerged alongsi ...

, prescribed guidance enforcement and criteria to determine compliance.

Overview

A data definition specification may be developed for any organization or specialized field, improving the quality of its products through consistency and transparency. It eliminates redundancy (since all contributing areas are referencing the same specification) and provides standardization, making it easier and more efficient to create, modify, verify, analyze and share information across the enterprise. To understand how a data definition specification works in an enterprise, we must look at the elements of a DDS. Writing data definitions, defining business terms (or rules) in the context of a particular environment, provides structure for an organization's

data architecture Data architecture consist of models, policies, rules, and standards that govern which data is collected and how it is stored, arranged, integrated, and put to use in data systems and in organizations. Data is usually one of several architecture d ...

. In developing these definitions, the words used must be traceable to clearly defined data. A data definition specification may be used in the following activities: *

Business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) consists of strategies, methodologies, and technologies used by enterprises for data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of BI technologies include Financial reporting, reporting, online an ...

Business process modeling Business process modeling (BPM) is the action of capturing and representing business processes, processes of an enterprise (i.e. modeling them), so that the current business processes may be analyzed, applied securely and consistently, improved, ...

* Business rules management *

Data analysis Data analysis is the process of inspecting, Data cleansing, cleansing, Data transformation, transforming, and Data modeling, modeling data with the goal of discovering useful information, informing conclusions, and supporting decision-making. Da ...

and

modeling A model is an informative representation of an object, person, or system. The term originally denoted the Plan_(drawing), plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French language, French and Italian language, Italian ult ...

Information architecture Information architecture (IA) is the structural design of shared information environments; the art and science of organizing and labelling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability; and an emerging ...

Metadata modeling Metadata modeling is a type of metamodeling used in software engineering and systems engineering for the analysis and construction of models applicable to and useful for some predefined class of problems. Meta-modeling is the analysis, constructio ...

* Report generation

Criteria

A data definition specification requires data definitions to be: * ''Atomic'' – singular, describing only one concept. Commonly used and ambiguous terms should be defined.Thomas, Gwen. (2008). Writing Enterprise-Quality Data Definitions: Tips for Creating Terms and Definitions. Data Governance Institute Web site: http://www.datagovernance.com/dgi_wp_writing_enterprise-quality_data_definitions.pdf While a term refers to one concept, several words may be used in a term: :*File – A concept identifiable with one word :*File extension – A concept identifiable with more than one word * ''Traceable'' – Mapped to a specific data element. In business, a term may be traced to an entity (for example, a customer) or an attribute (such as a customer's name). A term may be a value in a

data set A data set (or dataset) is a collection of data. In the case of tabular data, a data set corresponds to one or more table (database), database tables, where every column (database), column of a table represents a particular Variable (computer sci ...

(such as gender), or designate the data set itself. Traceability indicates relationships in the

data hierarchy Data hierarchy refers to the systematic organization of data, often in hierarchical form. Data organization involves characters, fields, records, files and so on. This concept is a starting point when trying to see what makes up data and whether da ...

. * ''Consistent'' - Used in a standard

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

; if used in a specific context, the context is noted * ''Accurate'' - Precise, correct and unambiguous, stating what the term is and is not * ''Clear'' - Readily understood by the reader * ''Complete'' - With the term, its description and contextual references * ''Concise'' - To avoid circular references

Applications

Enterprise data

A data definition specification was produced by the

Open Mobile Alliance OMA SpecWorks, previously the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), is a standards organization which develops open, international technical standards for the mobile phone industry. It is a nonprofit Non-governmental organization (NGO), not a formal govern ...

to document charging data. The document, the centralized catalog of data elements defined for interfaces, specifies the mapping of these data elements to protocol fields in the interfaces. Created for the exchange of financial data, Market Data Definition Language (MDDL) is an

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

specification designed

Clinical submissions

The

Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium The Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) is a standards developing organization (SDO) dealing with medical research data linked with healthcare,made to enable information system interoperability and to improve medical research a ...

, a global, multidisciplinary, non-profit organization, has established standards to support the acquisition, exchange, submission and archiving of clinical research data and metadata. CDISC standards are vendor-neutral, platform-independent and freely available from the CDISC website. The Case Report Tabulation Data Definition Specification (define.xml) draft version 2.0, the oldest data definition specification, is part of the evolution from the 1999 FDA electronic submission (eSub) guidance and electronic Common Technical Document (eCTD) documents specifying that a document describing the content and structure of included data be included in a submission. Define.xml was developed to automate the review process by generating a machine-readable data-definition document. Define.xml has standardized submissions to the

Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respo ...

, reducing review times from over two years to several months.

Archival data

A data definition specification is the foundation of

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

for

scientific data archiving Research data archiving is the long-term storage of scholarly research data, including the natural sciences, social sciences, and life sciences. The various academic journals have differing policies regarding how much of their data and methods re ...

. The

Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard The Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) is a metadata standards, metadata standard for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding objects within a digital library, expressed using the XML schema langu ...

(METS) uses one principle of a DDS: consistent use of key terms to catalog digital objects for global use. The METS schema is a flexible mechanism for encoding descriptive, administrative and structural metadata for a

digital library A digital library (also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, a library without walls, or a digital collection) is an online database of digital resources that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital ...

object and expressing complex links between metadata, and can provide a useful standard for the exchange of digital-library objects between repositories. A similar effort is underway to preserve complex data associated with video-game archiving. Preserving Virtual Worlds attempted to address archival-format deficiencies, citing the lack of suitable documentation for interactive fiction and games at the

bit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communication. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented as ...