DC Tabular Application Profiles

Many communities today create application profiles (APs) for their data. Application profiles provide the rules that govern the creation and reuse of metadata instances. Their function is both to explain the metadata but also to potentially constrain the metadata so that correct usage can be determined. A single profile can serve a variety of needs: metadata creation support, metadata validation, metadata exchange, metadata selection, and mapping between metadata from different sources. Application profiles need to be shareable so that data exchange between communities of practice can take place. There is, however, no current standard for the creation of application profiles such that they could be understood outside of the community within which they have been developed.