Objective of this new draft of the User Guide

This new SDMX User Guide aims at providing explanations and guidance to users (and potential users) of the version 2.1 of the Technical Specification released in April 2011. A User guide for version 2.0 already exists and has been released on the web in 2009 (http://sdmx.org/?page_id=38).

As version 2.1 of SDMX contains several innovative parts (such as web services guidelines, new data messages, new code lists and metadata management) this new release intends to document how the new standard can be used to fulfil the most typical use cases and scenarios for data and metadata exchange.

Like in the previous version 2.0, the emphasis, throughout the guide, is on practical use of SDMX, supported by examples. In addition to the examples in the text, some sections of the User Guide refer to example files which are too long to be included in the document. These files, now available in a separate annex, will be available for download with the electronic version of the User Guide on the SDMX web site.

Some parts of the present draft may be considered as quite technical, so that other paragraphs, oriented to a non-technical audience, could be added. Therefore, it is expected that further revised drafts will follow, in the next months, also taking advantage of new examples from real-world usage, and responding to needs expressed by readers.

This version - drafted by Chris Nelson, Jack Gager and Arofan Gregory and discussed within a specific sub-group of the SDMX Technical Working Group coordinated by Marco Pellegrino - is presented to the SDMX Secretariat, to the SDMX Statistical Working Group and to the whole community of SDMX experts.

Comments are welcome and can be sent to the SDMX Secretariat (secretariat@sdmx.org) indicating the version of the User Guide to which comments refer.

The final User Guide – edited and approved by SDMX – will be posted on the sdmx.org website.