[Repec-data] A first proposal

[Thomas Krichel]

  David K. Levine writes

> Not entirely sure I follow that.

  Yeah, because you are not familiar with ReDIF, I suspect

> So: thinking of a dataset as a bunch of related tables
  
  I'm not sure I understand what a "table" is here. 

> it seems like
> we want one type of metadata to describe the dataset which seems to
> be what Christian proposed. Then I understood we should have a
> second type of metadata to describe what is are in the tables

  I proposed "file" here. This is a more concrete thing than
  a "table", I think.

> (at least for those datasets that do in fact consist of a bunch of
> related tables). The thing is, the tables might be in one file, one
> per file, or several per file with a number of different
> files. Perhaps we need three levels

  Maybe but in that case we need to be clear what a table is. 
  If you have an SQL reference, useally a table is in a file,
  in Excell, you may have several sheets in a file. 

> - Christian's, the overall
> metadata for the dataset, a second describing how the data is
> distributed into files, and a third for describing a table?

  dataset > datatable > datafile

  or 
  
  dataset > datafile > datatable

-- 

  Cheers,

  Thomas Krichel                  http://openlib.org/home/krichel
                                              skype:thomaskrichel