Meeting notes - December 7, 2022

[InKyungChoi]

Participants: Francine Kalonji, Flavio Rizzolo, Zoltan Vereczkei, Jenny Linnerud, Florian Vucko, Andrea Petres, Ayman Hathoot, Claudia Brunini, Dan Gillman, Juan Munoz, MEJIA GONZALEZ RAUL, Wai Kit (Jackie) Si Tou, Christopher Jones and InKyung Choi

Issue #17 Registers in statistical production: their roles and types, and how to model them in GSIM

• Definition, explanatory text and some use case examples have been prepared
• Action: To wait feedback from Dan and Gorgia before finalising and to add visual aids later

Issue #28 GSIM Structure Group definition / explanatory text update

Regarding Unit and Dimensional Data Set (for Data Point too)

• Based on the discussion last week, the part is updated (e.g., Unit Data Set and Dimensional Data Set have been removed). Definition and Explanatory text of the Data Set are proposed accordingly.
• Action: To accept the changes and also the proposed definition of Data Point

Regarding Data Record and Logical Record

• Currently, Logical Record applies only to Unit Data Structure. With Data Recording now being directly linked to Data Set (previously, linked to Unit Data Set only), do we need to change this?
• Logical Record is an additional relationship that we put on top of the Unit Data Structure (e.g., individuals part of a family). We can change the cardinality of the association "is structured by" on Logical Record side from 1 to 0,1. This will make Logical Record optional for dimensional Data Set as well as unit Data Set that does not necessarily need any additional relationship specified by Logical Record
• How is such additional relationship covered in the case of dimensional Data Set? -> hierarchies (e.g., provinces being part of a country) is taken care by dimensions (e.g., value domain associated with classification that has hierarchy). -> but sometimes it might just be in the correspondence table, not in the hierarchical classification. Also, we can use Logical Record for keep the record linkage information in which case, it applies for both unit and dimensional Data Set.
• Action: to link Logical Record with Data Structure (not Unit Data Structure), change the cardinality of the association "is structured by" on Logical Record side from 1 to 0,1; and change the cardinality of the association "has" on Logical Record side from 1...many to 0...many (making optional)

Regarding the mix up of semantics and structure

• Question of structure and semantics is mixed all the time. Whether something is an Identifier or a Measure, it is not about structure, it is about the meaning of the variables, what roles they play and how we interpret them in certain contexts (same for Unit Type). Data Structure should live independently of whatever Data Set is being described. Assignment of roles should be independent from structure (i.e., how data is organised), they are the attribute of variable, not attribute of structure.
• We can change the cardinalities on the Data Structure from 1 to 1...*, so that the same component can belong to different data structures (c.f., currently, if "income" is a measure component for 10 different data structures, we need to define 10 different measure components). This would make the components independent from the data structure. In such case, the name data “structure” component is misleading so the name should be changed too.
• But components are not just about the role of variable, we can also attach other elements (e.g., whether it is mandatory or not) which is linked to data structure (i.e., some components are used in a certain way that is not the same in other data structures; hence data structure dependent) not to variable itself. This ability will be lost if we make components completely independent from structure.
• Action: to freeze the model for now and postpone changes for the next revision (need to change the name of Data Structure Component and cardinalities)

Issue #31 GSIM Exchange Group definition / explanatory text update

• Action: to remove "disseminated" and "collected" from the definition of Information Provider and Consumer
• If the definition of Information Consumer and Provider is “Agent that consumes / provides…” then why is it a sub-type of Role, not Agent or Agent In Role?
• The same agent can be both consumer and provider, so it is not about Agent, but about Role, so the current definition does not match with what we need.