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Approach

For UMM and CMR, we propose the following fundamental tenents to guide the resolution of issues related to additional attributes and acquisition information:

• Focus on the CMR community and their metadata uses.   Metadata standards, recommendations, and guidance only make sense in the context of a community and their use cases for the metadata.  When deciding between options for a UMM metadata structure, we choose the one that makes sense for the CMR community.  We learn from other communities, such as the ISO community, but our focus is on the metadata needs of the CMR community.

• Learn from ISO, but don’t blindly reuse ISO metadata structures.  Whenever possible,  have a single UMM metadata structure that might map to multiple locations in ISO.   We don’t need the flexibility and complexity of ISO to support the rich metadata needs of the CMR.   

• Whenever possible,  specific typed metadata structures should be created from the  classification  of additional attributes.   For example,  in UMM-C-136 our approach would move information from additional attributes to enhance the structure of Platform/Instrument characteristics  instead of moving the characteristics into new additional attributes.   Over time, this tenent will produce a richer UMM structure that evolves as our understanding of metadata, applications, and missions evolves.