Standards & Interoperability

Arches was designed with the consultation and incorporation of internationally adopted standards for information technology. Standards are agreed-upon requirements, guidelines, and specifications to ensure consensus, quality, interoperability, and security of technologies and data resources.

Interoperability, or the ability for two distinct systems to exchange information, is critical for long-term data management and stewardship, to ensure the discovery, evaluation, and reuse of these data. Because of this, Arches utilizes standards that support FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse) data principles.

Examples of standards supported by Arches

The following diagram shows the different kinds of standards supported by Arches, whether they are part of the core Arches code or dependent on the requirements of an Arches implementation, and where they fall on the spectrum between achieving general interoperability and specific interoperability. In this case, general interoperability is domain-agnostic and relates primarily to data and web standards, while specific interoperability applies to particular use cases and domains. For example, JSON is a standard that is broadly accepted and utilized by technical communities, while the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) is an ontology that defines cultural heritage data and data relationships.

Below are examples of standards that Arches supports.

Web/WC3 standards

  • JSON: An open-standard file format that stores and transmits data objects and is used in web applications and servers.
  • JSON-LD: A method for encoding linked data as JSON.

 

Geospatial standards

 

Digital metadata standards

 

Schema / data structure (standards implemented during the modeling process*)

  • CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM): Ontology for cultural heritage information and the relationships between related concepts (adopted as ISO 21127:2023).
  • Linked.Art: A shared conceptual model to describe Art with Linked Open Data.
  • Region- or domain-specific data content standards: Because Arches is flexible and includes the ability to define the content and structure of the database within the interface, it can accommodate the implementation of most standards that focus on region- or domain-specific content. An example of this is Arches for HERs, an Arches customization which implements UK cultural heritage data standards, including MIDAS Heritage and FISH vocabularies. The creation and use of Arches for HERs helps to disseminate and enforce these standards throughout the UK.

 

Controlled vocabularies (standards implemented during the modeling process*)

  • Getty AAT: The Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus is a multilingual, structured vocabulary for describing and indexing the visual arts and architecture.
  • FISH Vocabularies: Implemented within Arches for HERs, these thesauri consist of terminology to describe heritage in the UK and are supported by the Forum for Information Standards in Heritage (FISH) Terminology Working Group

 

Non-proprietary or open file formats

In addition to the above standards, Arches uses a variety of non-proprietary or open file formats for tabular data (e.g. .csv, .txt), images (e.g. .jpg, .png), web data (e.g. .json, .xml, .html), geospatial data (e.g. .tiff, .shp), text files (e.g. .txt, .pdf, .html), and more. The use of non-proprietary or open file formats helps to ensure that data is not locked in closed proprietary file formats that require specific software to access.

*For information on implementing standards during the modeling process, please refer to the Modeling Documentation page.

Last updated: October 2024