Application profiles

RIMMF6 includes the functionality to produce an application profile for any RDA Entity.

An application profile in RIMMF begins life as a full template for an RDA entity supplemented by the additional columns described below. The full templates assign default values taken from the RDA Toolkit and RDA Registry to the application profile properties, but each user-derived template may set its own profile values.

In the past, the user might create several templates for each entity, as a way to customize entering data for different content types. The next step in this process will now be to customize the application profile fields in each template.

When the user creates a new entity record in RIMMF, their first decision is to select an appropriate template for their metadata–this does not change in RIMMF6. But with the new functionality, the user is at the same time selecting an application profile for their data. In essence, what we have called “templates” for the last 12 years are now, also, “application profiles”.

When viewing or editing a template (or entity record), the display of associated profile properties is toggled on/off by pressing <Ctrl-F8>.

The application profile fields currently supported are listed below.

Use (Include)

This column contains a checkbox. The default is the checked state–the element is included in the profile.
URI: http://rimmf.com/v/include

Rept (Repeatability)

This column contains a checkbox. The default is the checked state–the element is repeatable.
URI: http://rimmf.com/v/repeatable

Mand (Mandatory)

This column contains a checkbox. The default is the unchecked state–the element is not required.
URI: http://rimmf.com/v/mandatory

RecMeth (Recording Methods)

This column contains a four digit number. The default value is “1234” (see the explanation below).
URI: http://rimmf.com/v/recordingmethods

SES (String encoding scheme)

This column contains a URI, plain text, or “0”.
URI: http://rimmf.com/v/SES

VES (Vocabulary encoding scheme)

This column contains a URI, plain text, or “0”.
URI: http://rimmf.com/v/VES

Policy (or Note)

This column contains a URI, plain text, or “0”.
URI: http://rimmf.com/v/policynote

Note about “0”

The use of “0” in the SES, VES, and Policy statements indicates that 'no value' has been recorded. RDF does not have a concept of a NULL value, and RIMMF has an aversion to writing triples with NULL values. On the other hand, if the entire statement is suppressed–e.g. a triple for an element's empty VES property–then the next time the template is opened, the program will notice that the element lacks a VES property, and fill it with the default (which would make it impossible to remove a VES link).

Recording methods are defined by the RDA Recording Methods vocabulary. There are four concepts in this vocabulary:

unstructured description  http://www.rdaregistry.info/termList/RDARecordingMethods/1001
structured description    http://www.rdaregistry.info/termList/RDARecordingMethods/1002
identifier                http://www.rdaregistry.info/termList/RDARecordingMethods/1003
IRI                       http://www.rdaregistry.info/termList/RDARecordingMethods/1004 

In RIMMF6, the “RecMeth” column in an application profile represents these values using a shortcut consisting of four Arabic numerals derived from the last digit of the registry notations for each method.

For example, “1234”, where:

• “1” indicates an unstructured description (1001)
• “2” indicates a structured description (1002)
• “3” indicates an identifer (1003)
• “4” indicates an IRI (1004)

The default value for the RecMeth column is “1234”, which indicates that any of the four recording methods can be used to record the data for the corresponding RDA element.

If a recording method is not applicable to an element, a “0” is entered in its place. To illustrate:

• “1000” indicates that only unstructured description is applicable
• “1200” indicates that either unstructured description or structured description are applicable (but not identifier or IRI)
• “0234” indicates that structured description, identifier, or IRI are applicable (but not unstructured description)
• “0034” indicates that either identifier or IRI are applicable (but not unstructured description or structured description)

There cannot be any blank spaces between the four numbers.