Appendices

0.∞ or 1.∞

Zero-to-infinity or one-to-infinity. This terminology is used in schema representation to indicate that an instance can occur from zero (or one) to an infinite number of times. In schema infosets, minimum or maximum occurrences (commonly termed minOccurs and maxOccurs) are written in schema as: minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded".

Attributes

A qualifier on an XML tag that provides additional information.

DTD

Documents that specify the valid tags and the valid structure of a document class.

Element

A unit of XML data, delimited by tags. An XML element can enclose other elements.

Entity

A distinct, individual item that can be included in an XML document by referencing it.

Extensibility

The xNAL schemas are extensible. This means that any number of elements from other namespaces may be added to an xNAL document where any element is allowed; and any number of attributes from other namespaces may be added to any element.

These places are illustrated in all diagrams as: .

This extensibility allows the use of xNAL constructs with data or metadata from other namespaces. This data may be from any proprietary namespace or another open standard.

All extensions must be consistent with the xNAL standard itself. Refer to xNAL governance documentation (http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ciq/ciq.html - 4) to find out more information on extending name and address information.

Infoset

The combination of namespace, attributes and elements of the schema

Name and address data parsing

A process of walking through the xNAL data and converting it into an application-specific form or just extracting the necessary values.

Name and address data processing

Any application-specific use of the data; for example, an application uses name and address data to match customer records and print postal labels

Namespace

A standard that lets you specify a unique label to the set of element names defined by a DTD. A document using that DTD can be included in any other document without having a conflict between element names. The elements defined in your DTD are then uniquely identified so that, for example, the parser can tell when an element called <name> should be interpreted according to your DTD, rather than using the definition for an element called "name" in a different DTD.

Parse

To analyse or separate input, for example, into more easily processed components. For Example to split a "block" of data in a single data field containing "MrAndrewCliveGolightly" into separate elements under Title, FirstName, MiddleName, LastName.

Note that the term is also used anecdotally to describe the process of using natural language content between the tags to try to add meaning to the content by associating elements with the token (a word or number) in the data. NameLine and AddressLine have appropriate examples.

Parser

A module that reads in XML data from an input source and breaks it up into chunks so that your program knows when it is working with a tag, an attribute, or element data. See example above.

A non-validating parser ensures that the XML data is well formed, but does not verify that it is valid.

A validating parser ensures that that XML data is well formed AND valid (i.e. conforms to a schema)

Root element

The outermost element in an XML document. The element that contains all other elements

Schema

A database-inspired method for specifying constraints on XML documents using an XML-based language. Schemas address deficiencies in DTDs, such as the inability to put constraints on the kinds of data that can occur in a particular field (for example, all numeric). Since schemas are founded on XML, they are hierarchical, so it is easier to create an unambiguous specification, and possible to determine the scope over which a comment is meant to apply.

Tag

A piece of text that describes a unit of data, or element, in XML. The tag is distinguishable as mark-up, as opposed to data, because it is surrounded by angle brackets (< and >).

Unparsed

Data that is in a "block" as shown in the parse example and not split by tags or elements

Valid

A valid XML document, in addition to being well formed, conforms to all the constraints imposed by a DTD. In other words, it does not contain any tags that are not permitted by the DTD, and the order of the tags conforms to the DTD's specifications.

Well-formed

A well-formed XML document is syntactically correct. It does not have any angle brackets that are not part of tags. In addition, all tags have an ending tag or are themselves self-ending. In addition, in a well-formed document, all tags are fully nested. Knowing that a document is well formed makes it possible to process it. A well-formed document may not be valid however. To determine that, you need a validating parser and a DTD.

API

Application Programming Interface - a set of functions that an application or component exposes to external software. Programmers use an API to create software that accesses the functionality of an application or component.

CIQ

Customer Information Quality

CVL

Controlled Value/vocabulary/code List

DTD

Document Type Definition

e-GIF

E-government Interoperability Framework

EGU

New Zealand E-government Unit

GML

Geography Markup Language; refer http://www.opengis.org/specs/

GUID

128-bit Global Unique IDentifier

LINZ

Land Information New Zealand

NZ Post

New Zealand Post

NZ xNAL

NZ E-government eXtensible Name and Address Language

OASIS

Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards

OASIS xNAL

eXtensible Name and Address Language developed by OASIS CIQ TC

SOAP

Simple Object Access Protocol

TC

OASIS Technical Committee

XAL

eXtensible Address Language

XCIL

eXtensible Customer Information Language

XML

eXtensible Markup Language

XNAL

eXtensible Name and Address Language

xNAL WG

NZ E-government xNAL Working Group

xNL

eXtensible Naming Language

xNL-basic

eXtensible Naming Language for basic (as opposed to complex or extended) person or organisation names

XSL

eXtensible Style Language

XSLT

EXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation. It is a sub set of XSL suitable for transforming an XML document in one format to an XML document in another format, such as HTML amongst many others including XML. So the output format could, for example be xNAL.