'$RCSfile: eml-protocol.xsd,v $' Copyright: 1997-2002 Regents of the University of California, University of New Mexico, and Arizona State University Sponsors: National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis and Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans, University of California Santa Barbara Long-Term Ecological Research Network Office, University of New Mexico Center for Environmental Studies, Arizona State University Other funding: National Science Foundation (see README for details) The David and Lucile Packard Foundation For Details: http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/ '$Author: obrien $' '$Date: 2008-09-26 23:59:46 $' '$Revision: 1.60 $' This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA eml-protocol

The EML Protocol Module is used to define abstract, prescriptive procedures for generating or processing data. Conceptually, a protocol is a standardized method. Eml-protocol resembles eml-methods; however, eml-methods is descriptive (often written in the declarative mood: "I took five subsamples...") whereas eml-protocol is prescriptive (often written in the imperative mood: "Take five subsamples..."). A protocol may have versions, whereas methods (as used in eml-methods) should not.

Use eml-protocol to describe prescriptive procedures that can be associated with other descriptive or prescriptive procedures. yes A prescriptive procedure; a standardized method A reusable container for information related to a prescriptive procedure. The ProtocolType container defines a number of reusable fields that can be referenced from multiple EML modules. It represents well-defined, prescriptive procedures that can be used to document other prescriptive procedures or descriptive procedures such as methods. A prescriptive procedure A reusable container for information related to a prescriptive procedure. The protocol field provides a container for other related fields, such as proceduralStep and ResourceGroup.