Page 65 - ITU Journal - ICT Discoveries - Volume 1, No. 2, December 2018 - Second special issue on Data for Good

ITU JOURNAL: ICT Discoveries, Vol. 1(2), December 2018

sources, vocabularies, relationships, and con-
trols both when it is managed internally and
externally.
– If inserted in data internally, procedural
metadata needs to be marked with proper
tags so that it is efficiently searchable and
parsable.
– Internal embedment in data or a device is
recommended when the procedure is specif-
ic to a certain data, device, system, or appli- Fig. 2 – Example of procedural metadata composing
cation domain.
– For generic usage, it is recommended to
manage procedural metadata externally and
in universal vocabularies.

– For the procedural metadata externally
managed in a repository, the modification
made after the first creation and its version
should be specified.
– The maintenance policies should be articu-
lated, especially the manner in which access,
change, usage, etc. of the procedural metada-
ta are allowed. Fig. 3 – Applying procedural metadata in W3C’s TD concept

3.3 Feasibility and security
However, in order to reduce the memory
Procedural metadata can be both internally and consumption of devices and overheads of the data,
externally managed as a part of the data itself or the procedural metadata can be externally
accompanying data. Therefore, the memory managed out of data, a device, and a system, and it
consumption and time complexity overheads can can be accessed and applied based on the needs
be managed flexibly according to requirements shown in the lower part of Fig. 4. Moreover, the
and specifications. As described in the upper part predefined procedures can be flexibly extended
of Fig. 4, the procedural metadata can be directly according to needs while providing skeletons of
attached to the devices and data published by the the common descriptions of procedures.
devices.
Security is another critical issue of IoT. Especially,
in the case of procedural metadata, security can be
vulnerable since it supports modifications of data,
devices, and systems. Hence, the security issue has
to be considered along with interoperability. For
data, devices, and systems that adopt procedural
metadata, security can be supported by controlling
the access, which can be managed with procedural
metadata as well. As in the example in Fig. 5, every

object needs to be cleared for each action if it
Fig. 1 – Concept of microdata structuring and annotation wants to access a certain system domain to read or
write on data, devices, or the system. That object

© International Telecommunication Union, 2018 43