Producing a Data Dictionary from an Extensible Markup Language (XML) Schemain the Global Force Management Data Initiative

Abstract

A data dictionary is a document that describes the schema of a database its tables, fields, datatypes, and allowable values plus additional instructions regarding its use. Traditionally the data dictionary is used to construct the database. However, when the Global Force Management (GFM) Data Initiative (DI) information exchange data model (IEDM) was migrated from Structured Query Language (SQL) to Extensible Markup Language (XML), the new XML Schema Definition (XSD) files were maintained in parallel with the data dictionary. Over time the XSD and data dictionary diverged so an application was written to construct the data dictionary in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) from the XSD files. This report documents the transformation script that was written, how it works, and the elements that were added to the XSD to facilitate the generation of the data dictionary. It concludes with suggestions for additional applications of this technique to extract information for use by other programs.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 2017
Accession Number
AD1029207

Entities

People

  • Frederick S. Brundick

Organizations

  • United States Army Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • C4I

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Command And Control
  • Commerce
  • Computer Programming
  • Database Management Systems
  • Databases
  • Department Of Defense
  • Domain Specific Programming Languages
  • Html
  • Information Exchange
  • Information Science
  • Instructions
  • Language
  • Markup Languages
  • Military Research
  • Programming Languages
  • Xml

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Database Systems and Applications