StatDataML: An XML format for statistical data observations (Q1775979)

The goal of this paper is to introduce a new data exchange format, called StatDataML, which seems to be rather general and flexible enough to cover most of statisticians data representation needs. StatDataML is based on XML, the Extensible Markup Language (World Wide Web Consortium, 2000), a physical data format allowing to enrich data with structure and meta-information. In addition, it borrows from the language S, such that data objects are basically organized as recursive (lists) and non-recursive (arrays) structures and may also be supplemented with meta-information. Besides a detail presentation of the language elements, the paper includes a comparison with other data concepts as well as some examples illustrating the StatDataML format and its practical use.