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 providing about 1200 concepts to address biodiversity data
The root element in ABCD is “DataSets” referring to a “DataSet”. One Data Set includes all information 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 transformation of the rescued data into ABCD format facilitates data exchange and interoperability with other databases and web services that also use this standard.
GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) and BioCASE (Biological Collection Access Service for Europe) currently use ABCD version 1.2 and 2.06.
The ABCD Schema Definition is located here:
The schema in also available in html.
