The EDI data portal has added a new informational check to the suite of data congruence checks it runs on every data package submitted. This check is information only and the community felt it was valuable, so we released it outside the regular twice-yearly schedule on July 11th, 2018. For detailed information contact info@environmentaldatainitiative.org.
About the check
Compare dataTable header row to attribute names
Some programs (e.g., R, matlab) are able read in the first row (header row) of a data table and convert the names found there to variables in code. EML metadata contains additional information about the attribute (table column) that is often not in the table header. EML Best Practices state that the header row of a table should match the attributeNames in metadata – this check displays header row names of the data table and the attribute names provided in the EML metadata to facilitate a visual comparison of the two sets of names.
This check displays the header row alongside attribute names for the user to compare their content visually. The check does not attempt to ascertain if the header and attributeNames match because table headers may be composed of multiple lines, and the matching line cannot be identified.
Checks returning warn or errors are released twice a year. A quorum of users approved releasing checks that are strictly informative as soon as they become available because informational checks do not affect report results, but may be of use to data managers.
- headerRowAttributeNames:
- Justification: Good practice.
- Type: congruence
- Action: Header row is displayed alongside attribute names Compare the content of the data header row to the content of EML attributeName
- Expectation: No expectation, information only
- Returns: info
- Justification: Good practice.
