Frequently Asked Questions

Metadata, or data about data, provides detailed information that supports the actual content of data instances. Metadata may include details about the origination of data, when it was created, or who authenticated it. Metadata information also helps determine approximate information including the specification of ranges, precision, and patterns, as well as units of measure. The GJXDM/ NIEM metadata methodology uses the basic “Types/Property” scheme, but requires a bit of rigor when creating definitions. Failure to keep in mind the difference between simple and complex types will result in unexpected XML structures. The ability to attach metadata to any field is very important to support semantically rich information sharing. Metadata allows:

• All GJXDM/ NIEM domain systems to assemble data from various sources while maintaining the origination information.

• Systems to operate from business rules on data access, ownership, and dissemination that are defined by justice stakeholders.

• The collection of detailed information regarding when the data was generated, by whom, or how long the information must be

There are two basic kinds of relationships – an “is-a” relationship and a “has-a” relationship. In database design and object oriented program architecture, “has-a” is a relationship where one object "belongs" to another object, and behaves according to the rules of ownership. Multiple “has-a” relationships will combine to form a possessive hierarchy. This is contrasted with an “is-a” relationship which constitutes a different kind of hierarchy.

If Dog and Cat subclasses inherit directly from the mammal super class, the relationship is referred to as an "is-a" relationship because a cat is a mammal. When a subclass inherits from a superclass, it has all of the characteristics of the super class. Therefore, a dog and a cat are considered extensions of mammal.

It also is natural to think of objects as containing other objects. For example, a computer, which can be considered an object by itself, may also contain a hard drive and a video card, which are also considered valid objects. It is possible to open up the computer and remove the hard drive, so both the computer and the hard drive are considered objects. In this manner, objects are sometimes built, or composed, from other objects. This is called composition. A composition relationship is described as a "has-a" relationship.

The GJXDM provides three basic ways of associating two pieces of information: inclusion, referencing, and relationships. Inclusion means, in the XML sense, that one piece of information is contained within another. Inclusion is one of the fundamental building blocks of GJXDM and is used throughout the data model. It is implemented in GJXDM by an element simply being included in a sequence within a complex type. For example, the j:PersonType structure in GJXDM contains an element called j:PersonBirthLocation, which represents the place where someone was born. Linking the person to that place can be accomplished by inclusion, i.e., by including the j:PersonBirthLocation element (which is of j:LocationType) within the j:Person element, like this:

<j:Person>

<j:PersonBirthLocation>

<j:LocationAddress>

<j:LocationCityName>Boston</j:LocationCityName>

<j:LocationStateCode.USPostalService>MA

</j:LocationStateCode.USPostalService>

</j:LocationAddress>

</j:PersonBirthLocation>

</j:Person>

The GJXDM provides three basic ways of associating two pieces of information: inclusion, referencing, and relationships. Referencing links one piece of information using a reference or “pointer” to another piece of information described elsewhere in the XML instance. The referencing facility exists natively in GJXDM. As every element included within each complex type is paired with a “reference” element that points to a structure at some other place in the instance. These reference elements are of GJXDM’s type “ReferenceType”, which basically just contains an attribute that references an element with a particular unique identifier attribute. Using referencing, an example that represents a person’s birth location would look like this:

<j:Location j:id=”location1”>

<j:LocationAddress>

<j:LocationCityName>Boston</j:LocationCityName>

<j:LocationStateCode.USPostalService>MA

</ j:LocationStateCode.USPostalService>

</j:LocationAddress>

</j:Location>

…

<j:Person>

<j:PersonBirthLocationReference j:ref=”location1”/>

</j:Person>

The GJXDM provides three basic ways of associating two pieces of information: inclusion, referencing, and relationships. The association method is accomplished by using a separate structure, called a relationship that links two pieces of information. This facility is also provided by GJXDM’s “RelationshipType” structure, which contains attributes for a “subject” (one side of the association), an “object” (the other side of the association), and a name for the association or relationship. Using a relationship, an example that represents a person’s birth location would look like this:

<j:Location j:id=”location1”>

<j:LocationAddress>

<j:LocationCityName>Boston</j:LocationCityName>

<j:LocationStateCode.USPostalService>MA

</j:LocationStateCode.USPostalService>

</j:LocationAddress>

</j:Location>

<j:Person j:id=”person1”>

</j:Person>

<j:Relationship j:subject=”person1” j:object=”location1” name=”j:PersonBirthLocation”/>

Inclusion is recommended as the "default" choice and should be used in all cases where the information is hierarchical (e.g. if there is a containment relationship and the information is not represented somewhere else).

References are useful when the object of an association has a unique identity and appears in multiple places. However, schema designers should ensure that the object truly has identity, and not use references because the information happens to be the same. Using a reference conveys semantics about two subjects referencing the same object and should not be used as a tool to reduce the size of instances.

Relationships can be used under similar circumstances as references, but are particularly useful when the association is not already defined in the GJXDM. Relationships result in simpler extensions and more flexibility than extending GJXDM types to include new elements. However, using relationships requires the schema designer to choose names for the relationship (in cases where the association is not represented by an existing GJXDM property). As of this moment, there is no agreed upon standard for these names.

References or relationships potentially add complexity and memory consumption of software built to process instances, because the software must maintain a list of objects and their identifiers to re-establish association links as the instance is parsed.

With the increase of travel throughout the United States and beyond, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are vital to ensuring safety, protecting environment and relieving traffic congestion. Working in cooperation with the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) is developing a family of standards known as 1512®.

This IEEE 1512 family of standards supports the exchange of incident-related data between transportation, public safety, and other responding agencies.

Click Here to read more about the IEEE 1512 family of standards.

UBL, the Universal Business Language, is the product of an international effort to define a royalty-free library of standard electronic XML business documents such as purchase orders and invoices. Developed in an open and accountable OASIS Technical Committee with participation from a variety of industry data standards organizations, UBL is designed to plug directly into existing business, legal, auditing, and records management practices, eliminating the re-keying of data in existing fax- and paper-based supply chains and providing an entry point into electronic commerce for small and medium-sized businesses.

Click Here to read more about the Universal Business Language (UBL).

Nillability allows tags to exisit without content and have that lack of content be meaningful.

Without some prior agreement, the absence of an element does not have any particular meaning. Take PersonMiddleName as an example. The following snippet of XML does not mean that the person has no middle name. It only means that no middle name was included in the exchange.

<PersonName>
<PersonGivenName>John</PersonGivenName>
<PersonSurName>Smith</PersonSurName>
</PersonName>

To show that the person in question really has no middle name, the PersonMiddleName can be set to nil via the xsi namespace:

<PersonName>
<PersonGivenName>John</PersonGivenName>
<PersonMiddleName xsi:nil="true"></PersonMiddleName>
<PersonSurName>Smith</PersonSurName>
</PersonName>

Nillability lets you show where the lack of data is meaningful. GJXDM and NIEM elements are nillable.

Biometrics is the science of automated methods for uniquely recognizing humans based upon one or more intrinsic physical or behavioral traits.

In information technology, the term “biometric authentication” refers to technologies that measure and analyze human physical and behavioral characteristics for authentication purposes. Examples of physical characteristics include fingerprints, eye retinas and irises, facial patterns and hand measurements, while examples of mostly behavioral characteristics include signature, gait and typing patterns.

Although biometrics have primarily been utilized by law enforcement, biometric technologies are now being used by other government agencies to authenticate a person’s identity and to secure the nation’s borders. Biometric systems recognize a person based on physiological characteristics, such as fingerprints, hand and facial features, and iris patterns, or behavioral characteristics that are learned or acquired, such as how a person signs his name, types, or even walks. The Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been a partner with Justice in improving the nation’s human identification systems.

The successful use of the classic biometric, fingerprints, has benefited from NIST research and development. For more than 30 years, NIST has helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) improve the automation process for matching “rolled” fingerprints taken by law enforcement agencies or “latent” prints found at crime scenes against the FBI’s master file of fingerprints. NIST test data have been used to develop automated systems that can correctly match fingerprints by the minutiae, or tiny details, that investigators previously had to read by hand. In cooperation with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), NIST also developed a uniform way for fingerprint, facial, scar, mark, and tattoo data to be exchanged between different jurisdictions and between dissimilar systems made by different manufacturers.

Within GJXDM and NIEM one can use BiometricType property to describe information used to measure a biological or behavioral characteristic.

Data integration is the method of combining data from different sources and providing the user with a unified view of the information. During recent years, data integration has been implemented in a variety of integration applications, for example:

§ By synchronizing the data of different applications to ensure that all changes in one application are reflected in another;

§ By migrating information from one system to another, e.g., populating databases of one application with information from another;

§ Using a ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) method to pull data from various sources into a data warehouse;

§ Providing access to a specific set of data for viewing, reporting, etc., e.g., via a portal.

However, data integration using these methods often provides information that is not current. Depending on the architecture, the data can be weeks, even months, old, and the data warehouse is usually updated through a batch, extract-aggregate-and-load, process. FTP is still the primary form of data integration today.

Fortunately, the recent development and standardization of web services, driven by the adoption of service oriented architecture (SOA), will allow the user to design an enterprise integration approach with a standards-based bus so that he can orchestrate sequences of services to perform complex business processes. SOA solutions allow all participating databases and services to receive new data constantly, thus providing more value to those using the source and target systems existing within the SOA.

A group of agencies acting together in a peer relationship to share sensitive information with each other, subject to applicable access control policies.

The establishment of an inter-federation trust model between like and unlike federations.

An Enterprise Information Exchange Model (EIEM) is a MPD based on Business Information Exchange Components (BIEC). A BIEC is a NIEM-conforming XML schema data component (type, element, attribute, or other XML construct) that is reused, subsetted, and/or extended, that meets a business requirement for an information-sharing enterprise. An EIEM is a collection of BIECs organized into a subset and one or more extension schemas. Constraint schemas and non-NIEM-conforming external standards schemas with type adapters are optional in an EIEM.???????????

Links: http://reference.niem.gov/niem/guidance/business-information-exchange-c…

Documents
https://bja.ojp.gov/media/document/29991

The NIEM Conformance Tool or ConTesA Tool is an option available for you to validate schema. The Conformance Validation Tool is a dynamic tool that allows you to upload an IEPD, a set of schemas in a zip file, or an individual schema.? This free public release tool of the NIEM Conformance intended to assist developers by automatically identifying potential locations of non-conformance within IEPD artifacts (including schemas, metadata, catalogs, and XML). The tool will generate the report after your file has been uploaded and generate a report in HTML, EXCEL, or XML format. The tool uses the NIEM Naming and Design Rules (NDR) 1.3 and associated IEPD specifications. This tool will soon integrate into NDR 3.0.

User need to have a NIEM Tool Account which is local account to access the tool or you can use your own personal Yahoo or Google account because this tool is using Open Id.

NIEM Tools Account Registered Link: http://tools.niem.gov/niemtools/user/user-add.iepd

Conformance Tool Link: http://tools.niem.gov/contesaNIEM/

Naming and Design Rules 1.3 and 3.0: http://reference.niem.gov/niem/specification/naming-and-design-rules/