Here at the Census Bureau, we make the data dictionary available in HTML, XML, and JSON for all of our API datasets. As we extend our output content types, the amount of metadata we expose expands, and the HTML becomes more difficult to view (think more and more columns), while the other two output types extend very well. We have a few internal applications using our dictionary schema to help their processing. One of the challenges we've discovered is that it requires standardization of the metadata model used to generate the data dictionaries, which can be tricky when multiple applications (API file generation being only one of them) use the same metadata scheme.
Also, I should give credit to our data content providers/subject matter experts who also create data dictionary content for viewing as static documents (PDF), which are usually found in the same area for bulk downloads using FTP.
Thanks,
Bill Rankin
DataWeb Team
U S Census Bureau
________________________________________
From:
us-govern...@googlegroups.com <
us-govern...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of
mje...@gmail.com <
mje...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2015 12:45 PM
To:
us-govern...@googlegroups.com
Cc:
Pulsifer...@dol.gov
Subject: Re: [Gov't APIs] API Metadata