[cdif-community] Definition of schema:Dataset

[Stephen Richard]

Donald-
I've  been working on CDIF metadata for data bundles in the NASA Astromaterials data  system<https://astromat.org/> (analogous to the bundles in the NASA planetary datasystem or RO-Crate).  The only downloadable artifact is a zipped set of files; inside the bundle are data files, supplementary image and text files, and yaml metadata (very thin content) for each of these. The bundle is a schema:Dataset, and it has a distribution that is a DataDownload for the zip archive, which hasPart the individual files represented as schema:Dataset, DigitalDocument, ImageObject as appropriate.    Variables described in the bundle are documented in a general way using schema:variableMeasured in the top-level dataset object (following CDIF discovery profile).  Details about data structure/representation of variable are in the Dataset object describing the file containing that information (linked back to the appropriate variableMeasured/PropertyValue.  The structure metadata uses some DDI-CDI elements (this is exploring how the CDIF data integration profile will be implemented).

The CDIF schema.org record is meant to support discovery and high-level assessment of the bundle, aggregating information from the various file-level metadata in the bundle.

Example attached-- this is a test draft, work in progress, comments invited!

Steve

Stephen M. Richard
US Geoscience Information Network (USGIN)
smrTucson at gmail.com
520-869-8545


________________________________
From: cdif-community <cdif-community-bounces at lists.codata.org> on behalf of Donald Hobern <donald.hobern at adelaide.edu.au>
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2025 5:16 PM
To: cdif-community at lists.codata.org <cdif-community at lists.codata.org>
Subject: [cdif-community] Definition of schema:Dataset

I'd like to check that there is a consistent definition for what we label as a schema:Dataset. Schema.org defined it as "A body of structured information describing some topic(s) of interest" (https://schema.org/Dataset). In line with this, RO-Crate seems to use Dataset as a container for one or more Files via schema:hasPart (e.g. https://www.researchobject.org/ro-crate/specification/1.2/introduction.html). Science on Schema.org doesn't provide a definition at https://github.com/ESIPFed/science-on-schema.org/blob/main/guides/Dataset.md, but my reading is that it expects a Dataset to be a file that contains PropertyValues.

Based on RO-Crate usage, I've been expecting to use schema:Dataset to describe the set of data, metadata and other files I expect to store together as the RO-Crate. I have also expected to use Dataset to delimit subsets of the RO-Crate that merit describing as self-contained subunits worth describing separately. This would mean that a simple RO-Crate would be a Dataset and that it would have multiple Files as parts. A more complicated RO-Crate would be a Dataset that has multiple Files and Datasets as parts (with the nested Datasets themselves having Files as parts). Based on this interpretation, most Datasets have a one-to-one relationship with a Folder.

Does this align with the expectations of other groups interested in CDIF? In short, is a schema:Dataset 1) a collection of Files representing the results of a study or 2) a File that contains PropertyValues (using e.g. CSV, NetCDF, HDF5, ...)?

Thanks,

Donald


Donald Hobern
Data Management Director, Australian Plant Phenomics Network
University of Adelaide - working from Canberra, ACT

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