The DDI Alliance is pleased to announce the Q2 2016 Development Draft of DDI Views, sometimes called DDI4. The comment period for the Q2 Draft is now open. Information on the review process is available from the DDI4 - Comment and Review page, which contains a link to comment instructions and to the release package itself (see the box labeled Current Review in the middle of the page).
DDI is transitioning to a model-driven specification to support new content and domains, to provide needed flexibility in rendering and packaging, and to ensure a sustainable development process for DDI going forward. The model will enable use-case driven "functional views" of the full model so that prospective DDI users can receive only the subset of DDI classes they need for a specific task or function (e.g., create a simple codebook). The transition also includes moving to a fully automated production framework to create the specification, bindings, and documentation. More information about the DDI work products and how they all fit together is available.
This release is one of several iterative releases, each of which builds on previous releases. The Q2 Draft includes the class descriptions and diagrams for several of the basic parts of the model, XML Bindings, and high level documentation. We are currently working out issues with the RDF/OWL implementation.
We are eager to obtain feedback from the DDI community in order to improve what we have and to validate our approach. The comment period is open until December 31, 2016, and we hope to hear from you.