IOF Data Standards project: Feedback welcome

– We are getting close to finishing the update of the IOF standard for information exchange, Mats Troeng – the man behind great orienteering software like QuickRoute, Doma and WinSplits – writes in an email. Now Troeng and the IOF want to have feedback from orienteers on the new standard by February 29th. If you have any opinions, please give your feedback.

– A preliminary draft of the new standard has been published, and is open for review, Troeng continues. – It is not a final version – it is now undergoing a review and we need your input to finalize it.

Draft version published

A draft version of the new data standard, including documentation, has been published as a XML schema file (XSD file) to be found here.

The draft includes many of the suggestions given at the project’s website. Some characteristics:

• The schema file has been designed with code-generation simplicity in mind, for example no use of elements and few restrictions about what elements are required in the schema. Also, the amount of required information about a person might differ in various situations – a competitor’s birth date is required, while a course setter’s is not. This implies that we can’t use a generic
  element for validation in both cases.
• Focus on data exchange in favour of presentation, even though XSLT transformations in many cases may be used to create reports.

Some commented example files have also been published. See examples here. A key to wide usage of the standard is to provide real-world examples, and it is hope that more example files can be added later on.

Feedback by February 29th

Troeng would be happy to receive feedback on this draft February 29th 2012 at latest. A final standard should hopefully be published soon after this deadline. Comments should be entered in the “Issues” forum at the Google Code site. Based on feedback, updated drafts are planned released approximately every two weeks until the deadline.