<?Cave Survey Data in XML?>

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Objective : The objective of this effort is to cooperatively develop, with the cave surveying community, an XML representation of cave survey data. The intent is to facilitate the recordation, transmission and storage of cave survey data in a form that increases its usefulness across the international cave surveying community. This site organizes discussion, background information, analysis, and proposals for an "open" solution to cave survey data in XML. It also offers links to XML news, tools and tutorials.

Approach : This effort will, after analyzing data elements commonly employed in most raw cave survey data files, has devised a suggested list of equivalent data elements and organized them into a proposed XML representation. Periodic revisions are made to that proposal based upon input from the community of cave survey software developers.

Latest News:

January 16, 2001 - Version v0.4 is now available for review and comment. This version incorporates incorporates the first use of attributes and their associated definitions in the DTD portion of the document. Feedback from developers will be made available in the Discussion section as they come in.

January 10, 2001 - Version v0.3 is available for review. This incorporates additional layers of detail in the XML structure and includes the first effort to describe the XML structure in a DTD. Feedback from developers will be made available in the Discussion section as they come in.

January 4, 2001 - The second draft (v0.2) of the proposed list of data elements for Cave Survey Data in XML has been released. Feedback from developers will be made available in the Discussion section as they come in.

December 18, 2000 - The first draft (v0.1) of the proposed list of data elements for Cave Survey Data in XML was put out to several of the developers of cave survey software for comment. Their Discussion , will be integrated into the next release of the proposal.

December 1, 2000 - the initial list of elements was established based upon the results of preliminary analysis of five popular cave survey software programs

November 26, 2000 - the white paper <?Cave Survey Data in XML?> discussing the merits of applying XML to cave survey data, and launching this effort, is published.