Question about updated 2.03 'value' attribute

Community Zone IATI Standard
#1

Hello! I have a question. I am porting our application to support IATI v. 2.03. On the 2.03 changelog it says, that for iati-activities/iati-activity/result/indicator/period/target element, the attribute @value was made optional and rules for its use added (see: http://reference.iatistandard.org/203/activity-standard/iati-activities/iati-activity/result/indicator/period/target/). Although, in the documentation it doesn’t mention what are the possible values of this element.

In the discussion (Results – represent more than quantitative data (included 2.03)) Mike Smith says, that the @value attribute has to be a valid number. But is this official ? If so, what kind of number ? Why this number is not specified in the documentation (http://reference.iatistandard.org/203/activity-standard/iati-activities/iati-activity/result/indicator/period/target/) ? Can it include absolutely any string ?

Hope someone can help me with this and tell me what are the ‘official’ requirements.

#2

Relevant bit of the documentation (emphasis mine):

@value

The target value.

This should be a numeric value if the measure is quantitative.

This value must be of type xsd:string.

Here’s the referenced change to the standard ruleset, checking that @value is present for quantitative measures: https://github.com/IATI/IATI-Rulesets/pull/55

There’s nothing checking that @value is numeric for quantitative measures.

#3

Thank you very much Andy! I will implement the checking in our system (OIPA), but do you have any idea why such things are not in the official documentation and they’re hidden as links to issues in comments within… pull requests ??.. Do you know why there is 0 info in this in docs ?

For example for me it would make sense to add this to the documentation… https://github.com/IATI/IATI-Rulesets/issues/51#issuecomment-351986870

#4

The IndicatorMeasure code descriptions are here:
http://reference.iatistandard.org/203/codelists/IndicatorMeasure/#codes

I think I’d conclude from those descriptions that codes 1, 2, 3 and 4 are quantitative. I.e. the same thing that’s stated in the comment you link to. But you’re right that this is not made explicit, and perhaps it should be.

The rule I mentioned above is documented here: http://reference.iatistandard.org/203/rulesets/standard-ruleset/#result-indicator-measure-1-or-measure-2-or-measure-3-or-measure-4-period-target

So I’m not sure I’d agree that there’s 0 info on this in the docs. But there’s certainly always room for improvement! For instance, I think I’d expect element pages to link to relevant ruleset rules.