5. USING THE STANDARDS

The standards defined in this document have been designed to facilitate the transfer of groundwater data. It provides the common data language between groundwater data supplier and data user. The standards describe groundwater data in terms of how it is categorised (ie. entities), the connections between data sets (ie. relationships), rules about how to handle data (ie. conventions) and standard units of measurement.

The standards are not prescriptive in terms of the digital format that is used. Data can be transferred as text files, spreadsheets or database dumps, as long as it is structured using the standard data model. To make the data model flexible, entities have been generalised wherever possible. Components of a bore such as casing, well screens and gravel packs are all construction_elements, while types of measurements such as chemical analytes, water levels and lithological logs are all parameters.

However, it may be more convenient and logical to transfer data in smaller, more specific files rather then a larger generic file (eg. a chemical analyte file, a water level file and a lithological log file rather than just one parameter file). This would be still appropriate, as the data would still conform to that defined for the parameter and result entities.

It is also common that the data that is being transferred contains an attribute that consistently has the same value, such as the bore identifier or the cross section of construction elements. Rather than replicating it in every data record, it would be possible to record the attribute value in one place, such as in the header of the file or in supporting documentation.