SDMX Glossary

The SDMX Glossary is an official guideline that defines key concepts used in SDMX-based data and metadata exchange. It provides definitions for terms found in the SDMX Information Model, Data Structure Definitions (DSDs), and Metadata Structure Definitions (MSDs), and is designed to serve as a single point of reference for shared terminology.

The glossary is implemented as a concept set, enriched with lexical notes, cross-references, comments, examples, and semantic relationships between terms.

While not intended to cover the full range of statistical terminology, the glossary focuses on terms central to metadata design and the implementation of SDMX-based exchange frameworks.

As part of the Interoperability Basis initiative, we carried out substantial semantic enrichment of the glossary. This included:

• Introducing formal semantic links between terms using SKOS and DCTERMS
• Aligning glossary entries with the concept scheme from the SDMX Content-Oriented Guidelines (2009), ensuring skos:exactMatch where applicable
• Enhancing the glossary's internal coherence and machine-readability to support integration into linked data environments

This enrichment strengthens the glossary’s role as a semantic backbone for SDMX metadata systems and improves its interoperability across platforms and statistical domains.

This glossary is based on version 2.0 of the SDMX glossary as published in the official global registry. While version 2.1 exists in HTML format, it is not available in a machine-readable form and has not been integrated into the registry. For this reason, version 2.0 was used as the reference.

Please also note that in this version of the glossary the property "source" has not been displayed due to the lack of information in the original SDMX glossary XML published in the official global registry.

We look forward to a revised and comprehensive glossary as part of SDMX version 3, and will carry out a review of sources once such an update becomes available.

https://sdmx.org/wp-content/uploads/SDMX_Glossary_Version_2_0_October_2018.htm

http://purl.org/linked-data/sdmx/2009/concept#