Attachment level

Property of an attribute defining the object to which data or metadata are linked.

For each attribute specified in a data structure, there is a definition of whether this attribute takes a:

• value for each observation in the Data Set;
• value for each time series in the Data Set;
• value for each group in the Data Set;
• single value for the entire Data Set.

Some metadata concepts (e.g. frequency) may not be meaningful at the observation level, but only when applied to a higher level (e.g. to a time series of observations). Time, on the other hand, is meaningful at observation level, because every observation is associated with a specific point or period in time. Data Structure Definitions and Metadata Structure Definitions provide information about the level at which a particular concept descriptor is relevant: at observation level, time series level, group level, dataset level or even Agency level. This is known as the "attachment level" of the concept.

This is a version 2.0 construct. In version 2.1 this is known as the "Attribute Relationship".

urn:sdmx:org.sdmx.infomodel.conceptscheme.Concept=SDMX:CROSS_DOMAIN_CONCEPTS(2.0).ATTACHMENT_LEV

SDMX, "Metadata Common Vocabulary", 2009