Proposal: A new overlay that enables the addition of non-multilanguage-related information about the Capture Base

[swcurran]

The Meta Overlay allows for the addition of multi-language "metadata" about the the capture base itself. However, there are cases when the "metadata" is the same across languages, and so putting it into the Meta layer is inappropriate. There should be a standard way of specifying that in the OCA specification.

Arguably, the "Classification" that is currently in the capture_base is an example of the type of information I mean, and my claim is that there more use cases for that, such that adding a more general way of expressing such information would be useful.

Such information could go into the capture_base itself, adding the listed name/value pairs to the capture_base, as "classification" has been added. However, I think it would be better to add a new overlay for that -- perhaps "metabase"? There would be only one such overlay normally.

[mitfik]

Could you describe a bit more context on the use case which you are thinking of? What information you would like include and why? Because if there is something for human being in most of the cases you would need internationalization (ergo goes to meta overlay) if not question is if those always are some generic meta data or have specific use case? Because if they are generic then we need "machine meta overlay" and "human meta overlay" where one is with i18n and second is not. Another way to think about it is that you could still use "meta overlay" with "artificial language" let's call it machine language which everyone can reuse. But then we would need to allow for composition two languages or more in the same time. Just think laud on that, does not need to make sens.

Putting anything capture base forces to issue new capture base each time when you add extra field and that is not desire due to limited re-usability and potential conflicts of attributes.

So please add some context or the use case happy to learn more.

[swcurran]

We could go with the Meta and "machine" (or some other name) as the equivalent -- it is the same. Good idea! I do think it would be worth calling out in the spec as a "known" approach, so that it could be done by others. That said, the items in the overlay are likely to be "ecosystem" specific -- as they are in our uses, across all of Aries.

In our case, the entire "branding" overlay that we are implementing is an example. All are attributes that apply to the capture base (the data structure) and not the attributes -- logos, images, colours.

We call out in the names of the "primary" and "secondary" attributes -- displayed when, for example, listing a number of the same instances of the data structure.

We call out names of attributes that hold data for special handling -- such as the attribute that holds the "Issue Date" and "Expiry Date" of the data. That way we can operate on that data, such as highlighting or preventing use of expired data.

I think it is logical that if multilingual "meta" is important enough to have (which it is), meta data that is not multilingual is equally important to have.

[pknowl]

@swcurran The tech team has started some early development for a sustainable solution for "Presentation" (as opposed to "Collection"). See @blelump comment in the following thread: #26

Also, you will likely be interested in my comment in the following thread regarding the separation of catalogue records from the OCA schema: #16