What data standards should a database designer know about?

Some are so general they jump out at you --

ISO-8601 temproal dispaly formats.
ISO-3166 Country codes
ISO-5218 sex codes
email addresses and URLs
Various national postal codes
Various banking codes liek CUSIP and ISIN
ISBN for books
ISAN for AV media
VIN for vehicles
Passport numbers

What am I forgetting? What is a good source for them?

As an aside, a few months ago, a poster assured me that his industry
(metals) had no standards and I should shut up and not criticize him
for "cowboy coding" his own encoding schemes.

Since I could look on the bottom of my cookware and see some numbers
that deal with the kind of stainless steel used, I was pretty sure he
was wrong, so I Googled it (http://metals.about.com/od/specification1/
Metals_Specifications_and_Standards.htm)

I am trying to get a book together on such standards so that maybe the
next batch of Newbies will stop inventing their own encodings.
Suggestions welcome!

On Mar 24, 7:28*pm, --CELKO-- <jcelko... (AT) earthlink (DOT) net> wrote:
Maybe his view is there is no one (or small N) standard. On that page
is mentioned:
"Database of 55,000 specifications for nonferrous metals. Cross-
reference 58 international standards, properties and equivalents for
aluminum, brass, copper, magnesium, nickel, tin, titanium, zinc."

just goes to prove that standards are great, there are so many to
choose from!
How about Internet standards:
MAC addresses
IP addresses (including IPv6)


other Industry specific codes:
medical (e.g., transcription codes)
Trucking VMRS (Vehicle maintenance Reporting standard)
Phone numbering

Does Legal industry have some standards (maybe Federal Register
numbering?? I don't know.)

School classes - is there a standard for coding college classes? or
does each school make up their own number scheme??

I'm surprised you don't list UPC and other bar codes.

Rare but: Astronomical objects numbering convention.
Geographic (latitude and longitude) Might be obvious but still don't
want to create your own without at least thinking about using this.

Font numbering!!!!

Biological, Chemical, Physical standards (those will fill some space
in a book). just consider the rules for identifying Hydrocarbon
compounds.

This could be a big book. Need a collaborator? 8^)
Ed

Joe,

I guess as Ed already said this might become a very big one. Standards
become very specialized and it depends on the business for which the
database is in use, which are important and which are not, but the
idea of creating a reference book isn't bad.

Here my input for a chapter about international trade and
transportation - this is just a selection of those which appear most
important to me:

ISO 6346 numbering of freight containers (and also for chassis,
trailers, detachable equipment)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_6346

UN location codes (mainly for trade and transportation)
http://www.unece.org/cefact/locode/

UN/ECE Package type codes
http://www.unece.org/cefact/recommen..._ecetrd309.pdf

International Maritime Dangerous Goods (IMDG) Codes
http://www.imo.org/TCD/mainframe.asp?topic_id=158
(just available for purchase)
N.B: This is just the start: dangerous goods coding could fill a
chapter of itself.

Harmonized system (HS) customs cargo classification codes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonized_System

INCOTERMS (13 codes for foreign trade contracts indicating the passing
of risk and costs from seller to buyer and further obligations)
http://www.iccwbo.org/incoterms/id3040/index.html

brgds

Philipp Post

--CELKO-- <jcelko212 (AT) earthlink (DOT) net> wrote:

If you were teaching the course would you recommend using a similar
book or doing a web search?

When you deal with international applications you also need language
codes:

ISO 636
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639

Here is the issue that some are using the old two letter codes and
others are using some version of the newer three-letter codes.

For banking, trade, transport, travel and many other business also
currency codes:

ISO 4217
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217

Brgds

Philipp Post

On Mar 25, 8:40*am, Philipp Post <Post.Phil... (AT) googlemail (DOT) com> wrote:
Wow, some good ones!

.. and the regular expressions for their validation.

ICD codes, SNOP and other are good

Did not know it existed

Laws are numbered, but at the state and local levels in the US.

Yes and no. The ACM and IEEE have standard curriculum with their
numbering system. A lot of school use them, but the colleges map
their own encodings to the ACM for transfer credits.

I do; EAN and GTIN are the current things to watch.

I have them and the HTM (Hierarchical Triangular Mesh) and the UN
location codes

Keep talking. I stopped setting type in the 1970's. Classification
schemes were not standardized, much less the fonts.

Actually, I need about ten of them. I have my wife doing colors (land
system, Pantone, RGB, etc.)

On Mar 25, 8:47*am, David Segall <da... (AT) address (DOT) invalid> wrote:
After thinking about it, I am guessing the idea is to cover key
standards, and to provide enough information about others to make a
web search succeed for each standard. But I'm sure Joe will comment.

Ed.

On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:47:02 GMT, David Segall <david (AT) address (DOT) invalid> wrote:

Not David Segall the Scuttlebutt of the Holodeck, is it?

If so, see:

http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/HOLODECK.HTM


--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

The metadata Standards group is supposed to be working on a repository
for such stuff, but I do not have any idea how well that is going.

Very good! and exactly what I am after. Not so much depth, but a
taste of the basics in a given area.

Isn't there a book of holidays for ports that International Maritime
shipping uses?