Glossary
| Term | Definition | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Agency | Organisation or other expert body responsible for the operational maintenance of commonly used metadata artefacts. | |
| Code list | Code lists are predefined, organised sets of items that describe one or more statistical concepts. | Each code list has an identifier (code list identifier), a label, and a description. |
| Dataflow | Structure which describes, categorises, and constrains the allowable content of a dataset that providers supply for different reference periods. | A dataflow is an abstract concept of the data sets, meaning a structure without any data. |
| Dataset | Organised set of data defined by a data structure definition. | |
| Data structure definition |
Set of structural metadata associated with a dataset. It includes information about how concepts are associated with the measures, dimensions, and attributes of a data cube, along with information about the representation of data and related descriptive metadata. |
|
| Dimension |
A statistical concept used, in combination with other statistical concepts, to identify a statistical series or individual observations. |
Dimensions form the definition of a dataset. They can include all positions of a code list or only a selection of them. |
| Flag | An attribute of a cell in a dataset representing qualitative information about the value of that cell. | Sometimes statistical data need additional information to be properly interpreted. Such information is provided by flags. |
| Identifier | Short name that uniquely identifies a dataset. | |
| Indicator | A data element that represents statistical data for a specified time, place, and other characteristics, and is corrected for at least 1 dimension (usually size) to allow for meaningful comparisons. |
A simple aggregation such as the number of accidents, total income or female Members of Parliament, is not in itself an indicator, as it is not comparable between populations. However, if these values are standardised, e.g. number of accidents per thousand of population, average income, or women Members of Parliament as a percentage of the total, the result meets the criteria for an indicator. |
| Navigation tree | Hierarchical structure used to categorise the statistical datasets in the Eurostat database. | |
| Observation status | Information about the quality of a value or an unusual or missing value. | Used as synonym for a flag. |
| Position | Element of a code list or dimension, which complies with the concept underlying to the code list.
It defines various properties such as the identifier, label, creation date, description (optional). |
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| Structural metadata | Metadata that identify, describe, organise, and present data. |
Structural metadata encompass the titles of the variables and dimensions of statistical datasets, as well as the units employed, code lists (e.g. for territorial coding), data formats, potential value ranges, time dimensions, value ranges of flags, classifications used, etc. |