ACI ACRIS Semantic Model. Data Element Naming Standards V1.1

Doc Name: Data Element Naming Standards Doc Ref: 10XXX-NDR-00001 Version 1.1
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ACRIS Semantic Model
Data Element Naming Standards
Author : Segun Alayande
Date Created : 28 August 2017
Last Updated : 12 September 2017
Version : 1.1
Doc Ref No : 10XXX-NDR-00001

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1 Document Control
1.1 Change Control Record
Date Author Version Change Reference
28/08/2017 Segun Alayande V1.0
12/09/2017 Bob Logan V1.1 Distributed for ACI review
1.2 Reviewers List
Name Position
ACRIS Working Group
1.3 Terminology
Term Description
ACI Airports Council International
ACRIS Aviation Community Recommended Information Services
ESRI An international supplier of geographic information system software, web GIS and geodatabase
management applications
NDR Naming and Design Rules
UDEF Universal Data Element Framework
UML Unified Modelling Language
UN CEFACT United Nations Centre for Facilitation of Trade
XML eXtensible Markup Language
XSD XML Schema Design
1.4 Reference Documents
Ref Version Document Title Reference Location
ISO IEC 11179 Parts 1-5
V3.0 UN CEFACT Naming and Design Rules
1.5 Document Control
Printed copies of this document are uncontrolled.

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Contents
1 Document Control ..................................................................................................................................................................2
1.1 Change Control Record.....................................................................................................................................................2
1.2 Reviewers List ...................................................................................................................................................................2
1.3 Terminology.......................................................................................................................................................................2
1.4 Reference Documents.......................................................................................................................................................2
1.5 Document Control..............................................................................................................................................................2
2 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................4
2.1 Purpose of This Document ................................................................................................................................................4
2.2 Scope ................................................................................................................................................................................4
2.3 Audience............................................................................................................................................................................4
2.4 Purpose of Data Element Naming Standards ....................................................................................................................4
3 Principles and Guidelines.......................................................................................................................................................5
3.1 Data Naming Principles .....................................................................................................................................................5
3.2 Data Element Naming Guidelines......................................................................................................................................5
4 ISO/IEC 11179 Naming Convention.......................................................................................................................................6
4.1 Conforming to the Convention ...........................................................................................................................................6
5 Data Element Naming Rules..................................................................................................................................................8
6 Application of Naming Standards in ACRIS Semantic Model Development.........................................................................10
6.1 ACRIS Semantic Model...................................................................................................................................................10
6.2 The ACRIS Semantic Model Layers ................................................................................................................................10
6.3 The Language Layer........................................................................................................................................................11
6.4 The Knowledge Layer......................................................................................................................................................11
6.5 The Data Element Library Layer......................................................................................................................................11
6.6 The Technical Realisation Layer .....................................................................................................................................11
7 XML Schema Naming Standard...........................................................................................................................................12
8 Appendix A: Representation Terms .....................................................................................................................................13
Figures
Figure 4-1 Example Name Structure.............................................................................................................................7
Figure 6-1 ACI ACRIS Semantic Model Layers.............................................................................................................10
Figure 7-1 XML Tag Naming Standards.......................................................................................................................12
Figure 8-1 Representational Terms ............................................................................................................................13

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2 Introduction
2.1 Purpose of This Document
The purpose of this document is to describe the data elements naming approach used in the development of
the ACI ACRIS Semantic Model. This approach is based on the ISO/IEC 11179 metadata management
standards. This document is for Architects involved in the design of and use of the ACRIS Semantic Model
and its derivative artefacts including web services.
2.2 Scope
The scope of this document includes the naming standards for ACRIS projects.
2.3 Audience
The intended audience for this document includes enterprise and information architects responsible for the
IT architecture and information standards, and the solution architects responsible for the technology
solutions that are compliant with international standards for information exchange.
2.4 Purpose of Data Element Naming Standards
Data element naming standards enable Architects create data names that are meaningful, consistent and
based on the language of the Airport business. The standard names communicate facts about the Airport
business in the ACRIS Semantic Model. The use of naming standards in the ACRIS Semantic Model enables
sharing of standard data between Airports and business partners. The use of the data element naming
standards as described in this document enables integration of applications based on disparate data models
in Airports. The adoption of the data element naming standards also enable the management of all types of
business and technical metadata in an Airport enterprise.

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3 Principles and Guidelines
3.1 Data Naming Principles
The ACRIS Semantic Model data element naming standards recommend conventions and standards that
adhere to the following principles:
• The data element names must be precise, unambiguous and meaningful.
• The names must reflect the business concept, and not simply a concept derived from an information
system.
• The application of the data naming standards must be practical and self-documenting. For example,
an Airport Architect should have a good idea what the data name means without having to read the
description because the name will have been derived from the business use or purpose.
• This approach must support agile Airport systems development and application integration projects.
3.2 Data Element Naming Guidelines
The ACRIS Semantic Model comprises models that are abstractions of the Airport business and that
represent what is known about the Airport. There is a relationship between the language and the core ideas
represented in models. The ACRIS Semantic Model, therefore uses English language descriptive terms to
convey business concepts and their relationships in its models. Business Terms, Concepts, Data Objects,
Entities, XSDComplexTypes, Tables etc. are based on the English language descriptions which may be easily
translated to other languages.
Data element names should:
• Be meaningful.
• Use no special characters (/ * # $).
• Not begin with a numeric character.
• Not use abbreviation algorithms.

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4 ISO/IEC 11179 Naming Convention
4.1 Conforming to the Convention
The ACRIS Semantic Model naming convention follows the guidelines set out in ISO / IEC FDIS 11179 Parts 1-
5. Data element names comprise four parts that include:
1. Object Class Term
2. Property Term
3. Representation Term
4. Qualifier Term
The first three parts of the data element name may be preceded by an associated Qualifier Term.
Object Class Term:
A part of a data element name derived from ideas, abstractions or things in the real world, which are the
concepts in the ACRIS Semantic Model. Examples include Aircraft Movement, Passenger Party and Bag Item.
Property Term:
This is the part of the data element name that expresses a property of an object class. Examples for Aircraft
Movement may include:
1. Identifier
2. Airport
3. Time
Representation Term:
A part of the data element name which describes how its values are represented. Examples of
Representation Terms include Identifier, Code, Name, Date. The use of these terms is proposed through the
adoption of the ISO 1179 standards. Appendix A lists the Representative Terms.
The Representation Term may already be present in the Property Term as in the example of ICAO Identifier.
When this happens, one occurrence of the word, “Identifier” is dropped to avoid duplication. Representation
Terms correspond to data domains.

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Qualifier Term:
A part of a data element name which helps to make the data element name more specific. Qualifier Terms
may precede Object Class Terms, Property Terms, and Representation Terms to uniquely identify a data
element.
For example, the Qualifier Terms, ICAO, IATA, Originating, Destination, Estimated Arrival clarifies the
property terms above as follows;
1. ICAO Identifier
2. IATA Identifier
3. Originating Airport
4. Destination Airport
5. Estimated Arrival Time
The complete data element names for the ICAO Identifier is “Aircraft Movement ICAO Identifier Code”. This
information will be represented in the ACRIS Semantic Model using UML class diagram in Example 1 below
as:
UML Objects UML Class UML Class Attribute UML Data Type
ISO 11179 terms Object Class Term Property Term Representation Term
Airport Example1 Aircraft Movement ICAO Identifier Code
Airport Example2 Airport Facility Name Text
Figure 4-1 Example Name Structure

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5 Data Element Naming Rules
The naming rules enable verification and compliance of models to the ACRIS Semantic Model standards. The
rules below are derived from Annex A of ISO / IEC FDIS 11179 Part 5.
Semantic Rules
1. One and only one Object Class Term shall be present.
2. One and only one Property Term shall be present.
3. One and only one Representation Term shall be used.
4. Qualifier Terms may be added as needed to describe the data element and make it unique within a
specified context.
5. Terms may be composed of more than one word.
Syntactic Rules
1. The Object Class Term shall occupy the first position.
2. The Property Term shall follow the Object Class Term and precede the Representation Term. If any
word in the Property Term is already present in the Object Class Term, it should be removed.
3. The Representation Term shall occupy the last position. If any word in the Representation Term is
already present in the Property Term, it should be removed.
4. Qualifier Terms shall precede the component qualified, which may be an Object Class Term,
5. Property Term or Representation Term. The order of qualifiers shall not be used to differentiate data
elements.
Lexical Rules
1. Nouns and adjectives shall be in the singular form only.
2. Name components and words in multi-word terms shall be separated by spaces.
3. No special characters may be used. All words shall begin with a capital letter with the remaining
letters in lower case.
4. Acronyms may be permitted if they are widely used and universally understood in the business
community.
5. Abbreviations are not permitted.
Uniqueness Rule
1. All data element names shall be unique within the ACRIS Semantic Model.
Domain Rules
1. Data elements using a Representation Term must be consistently associated with the same data
domain.
2. More than one Representation Term may map to the same data domain.

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Definition Rules
Data element definitions shall:
1. State the essential meaning of the concept precisely, unambiguously, and concisely.
2. Match the data element name in terms of the implied scope of the concept.
3. Avoid circularity by not using the components of the data element name.
4. Use the same terminology and structure for related data elements.
5. Not embed the definitions of other data elements.
6. Not include rationale, functional usage, procedural, or domain information.
7. Be unique within the dictionary.
8. Be stated in the singular.
9. Include explanations for any acronym used.

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6 Application of Naming Standards in ACRIS Semantic Model Development
6.1 ACRIS Semantic Model
The ACRIS Semantic Model is an Airport community knowledge-driven specification of data used in the
Airports. It is also a framework for specifying information requirements at the Airport industry and
enterprise level. The common information requirements specification enable the implementation of
information systems that easily communicate with each other.
The ACRIS Semantic Model is not one model but a collection of models that address industry and corporate
level requirements for information.
The ACRIS Semantic Model also contain a collection of analysis patterns that may be reused by Business
Analysts and Information Architects across industry and individual Airport projects. The Data Element
Naming standard was used to create the ACRIS Semantic Model and this section describes the different
model layers and how the standard is applied.
6.2 The ACRIS Semantic Model Layers
There four primary layers in the ACRIS Semantic Model. These layers are the Language layer, the Knowledge
layer, the Data Element Library and the Technical Realisation layer. Each layer in the ACRIS Semantic Model
holds a different type of model to serve a purpose.
Figure 6-1 ACI ACRIS Semantic Model Layers
ACIACRISSemanticModel
Language
Knowledge
Data Element
Library
Technical
Realisation

6.3 The Language Layer
This layer of the ACRIS Semantic Model hold a collection of business terms or words used by the business
and the definition of the terms. These terms are business context dependent. An example of a common term
is “Flight”. The objective of this layer is to articulate the language of the different professional language
communities within an Airport business and to use the content of this layer to disambiguate the meaning of
these terms. In this layer, the Data Naming standards are not applied and the business terms are used as
provided.
6.4 The Knowledge Layer
This layer contains the business ideas or concepts that the terms in the glossary represent. The concepts are
organised to depict how they relate to each other in what is commonly referred to as concept trees or
concept taxonomy. The smallest grain of business knowledge is the concept or idea. An example of a concept
is Aircraft Movement. This is related to the term, “Flight”. The “Aircraft Movement” concept is related in a
hierarchy to a more general concept of “Movement”. The objective of this layer is to organise the Airport
community business knowledge and to apply this to capture business policies and rules. The second function
of this layer is to organise the business knowledge for use as the context for naming data elements and to
establish a library of re-usable data elements at the next layer. A similar concept taxonomy is the Open
Group implementation of the ISO/IEC 11179 known as the Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF). The
data naming standards are applied to the names of the concepts.
6.5 The Data Element Library Layer
This layer of the model is a collection of data elements organised by the top-level concepts established in the
Knowledge layer. It is in the Data Element Library layer that the naming standards is applied to the data
entities and attributes.
6.6 The Technical Realisation Layer
This layer holds project or Airport business domain models designed to address specific problems and using
modeling language profiles that address the solution technology. For example, to develop a Geodatabase
that will be implemented in an ESRI product, an Architect would design a model using a UML profile for
geodatabases that would enable easy transformation into a schema the ESRI product uses. In addition, if the
purpose of the implementation are industry web services, an Architect would use a UML profile based on the
UNCEFACT NDR 3.0 that would enable the generation of schema files that comply with the naming
standards. The UNCEFACT NDR 3.0 is an implementation of the ISO/IEC 11179 and so the UNCEFACT NDR 3.0
is a reference standard for XML schema in the ACRIS Semantic Model.

7 XML Schema Naming Standard
A purpose of the ACRIS Semantic Model is the development of XML and JSON schema from standard data
elements. These standards based schema are used in the definition and design of industry and enterprise
web services that enable business-to-business and application-to-application integration.
This section of the data element naming standards describe how the ACRIS Semantic Model data naming
standards may be applied to the naming of XML schema.
XML schema describe the data elements that will be communicated or shared in a business communication
or an application integration scenario. XML schema introduces additional constructs over that which exists in
standards information models. These constructs were introduced to enable definition, validation and
processing of XML documents. These XML constructs are enclosed in tag pairs.
Rule Description Example
Element
Elements should be defined using
upper camel case, i.e. element names
have their first letter uppercase with
each subsequent word, phrase, or
acronym capitalised.
<OriginatingAirport>
Type
Types should be defined using upper
camel case and appended with the
term “Type”.
<AirportType>
Complex Type
Complex types should bear the name
of the XML elements whose content
model they represent and append the
name with the term “Type”.
<AircraftMovementType>
Simple Type
Simple types should bear the name of
data dictionary domain they represent
and append the name with the term
“Type”.
<DescriptionTextType>
Acronym
The use of acronyms is discouraged in
general. However, the use of some
acronyms that are widely understood
and accepted in the business
communities is permitted. In this case,
all acronyms must be shown in
uppercase.
<ICAOIdentifier>
<IATACode>
Illegal Characters
Illegal characters cannot be used (e.g.:
/ * # $, etc.). Recommended characters
in a tag name are basically limited to
letters and underscores.
<ArrivalDate/Time> is not allowed.
<ArrivalDateTime> is allowed
Similar Names
Use similar tag names with elements in
a similar child structure.
<ContactAddress>
<BusinessAddress>
<HomeAddress>
Plural Names
Use plural tag names only for
collections.
<BagItemTags>
Name Size
Element and attribute name sizes have
no limitation. However, the names
must be meaningful to the
<PassengerPartyInformation>
Figure 7-1 XML Tag Naming Standards

8 Appendix A: Representation Terms
The following standard representation terms are taken from ISO IEC 11179 Parts 1-5.
Representation Type Description
Code A system of valid symbols that substitute for specified values e.g. alpha, numeric, symbols
and/or combinations.
Count Non-monetary numeric value arrived at by counting.
Currency Monetary representation.
Date Calendar representation e.g. YYYY-MM-DD.
Graphic Diagrams, graphs, mathematical curves, or the like – usually a vector image.
Icon A sign or representation that stands for its object by virtue of a resemblance or analogy to it.
Picture A visual representation of a person, object, or scene – usually a raster image.
Quantity A continuous number such as the linear dimensions, capacity/amount (non-monetary) of an
object.
Text A text field that is usually unformatted.
Time Time of day or duration e.g. HH:MM:SS.SSSS.
Figure 8-1 Representational Terms

End of Document

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