ABCD Access to Biological Collection Data, Standard
ABCD
ABCD, Access to Biological Collection Data, is an XML schema, which is recommended as a standard by TDWG (Biological collections standards). An XML Schema is an application orientated language describing the structure of the XML document. A schema is necessary to create valid XML documents. The highly structured ABCD schema addresses biodiversity data providing about 1200 concepts.
Root element in ABCD is “DataSets” referring to a “DataSet”. One Data Set includes all informations concerning one database, such as metadata as well as gathering data and identifications.
The attributes of the rescued primary databases are assigned to ABCD elements. To give an example: An attribute named “species name” in the primary database is matched to “FullScientificNameString” element in ABCD. The mapping to ABCD elements enables accessibility and interoperability of the rescued data and data exchange. GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) and BioCASE (Biological Collection Access Service for Europe) currently use ABCD version 1.2 and 2.06.
ABCD Schema Definition is located here:
Read the Schema in html:
