Languages, Countries And Codes Avatar
  1. OMG Specification

Languages, Countries And Codes — Closed Issues

  • Acronym: LCC
  • Issues Count: 14
  • Description: Issues resolved by a task force and approved by Board
Closed All
Issues resolved by a task force and approved by Board

Issues Summary

Key Issue Reported Fixed Disposition Status
LCC11-11 URIs defined in the LCC specification need to be revised from http to https LCC 1.0 LCC 1.1 Resolved closed
LCC11-10 Revise the Overview section of the specification to support the current approach to representation of the standards LCC 1.0 LCC 1.1 Resolved closed
LCC11-9 In country SB, URI for region type clashes with that of an actual region LCC 1.0 LCC 1.1 Resolved closed
LCC11-8 Definitions of Languages in 3166-2 ontology refer to language codes LCC 1.0 LCC 1.1 Resolved closed
LCC11-29 sameAs links missing between some Subdivisions and Countries LCC 1.0 LCC 1.1 Resolved closed
LCC11-26 Specification and Module files do not link to their parts LCC 1.0 LCC 1.1 Resolved closed
LCC11-24 The addition of the language tags (LCC-2) introduced a logical inconsistency that must be corrected LCC 1.0 LCC 1.1 Resolved closed
LCC11-19 Create metadata files for LCC version 1.1 LCC 1.0 LCC 1.1 Resolved closed
LCC11-7 There are cases that are syntactically incorrect in the country codes ontology with respect to having both language tags and a datatype of xsd:string LCC 1.0 LCC 1.1 Resolved closed
LCC11-4 Provide capability to reference countries and regions using their code LCC 1.0 LCC 1.1 Resolved closed
LCC11-12 Annex B lists the country region code ontologies as normative, but a few of these have changed since the 1.0 release LCC 1.0 LCC 1.1 Resolved closed
LCC11-3 The language and country codes have been updated by ISO and should be revised accordingly in LCC LCC 1.0 LCC 1.1 Resolved closed
LCC11-2 There is a request for us to add the language tags to the natural language specific properties for language codes LCC 1.0 LCC 1.1 Resolved closed
LCC11-1 The conformance section of the specification is weak LCC 1.0b1 LCC 1.1 Resolved closed

Issues Descriptions

URIs defined in the LCC specification need to be revised from http to https

  • Key: LCC11-11
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Thematix Partners LLC ( Mrs. Elisa F. Kendall)
  • Summary:

    This changes the set of canonical URIs in Table 7.2 and elsewhere in the text of the standard as well as in the machine-readable files.

  • Reported: LCC 1.0 — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 17:56 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — LCC 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    Replace http:// in all URIs with https:// except for specific references to LCC 1.0

    In both the specification and machine readable files.
    Note that this resolution was applied after all resolutions up to and including LCC11-19

  • Updated: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:57 GMT
  • Attachments:

Revise the Overview section of the specification to support the current approach to representation of the standards

  • Key: LCC11-10
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Thematix Partners LLC ( Mrs. Elisa F. Kendall)
  • Summary:

    The current version of the specification breaks the country codes for regions up into individual ontologies by region, and includes the U.N. M49 macro region codes, which are quite useful for implementations that only need a subset of the region codes. This should be reflected in the specification.

    In addition, a sentence should be added at the end of the overview that states that there is no need, based on feedback from the user community, to provide the ODM XMI or UML XMI for the ontologies containing individuals for regions, only for the primary ontologies and country codes. Thus, the LCC 1.1 specification no longer includes those artifacts.

    Minor language issues, such as the use of the term 'trigraph' and wrong reference to '630-4' rather than '639-4' in that section should also be corrected.

  • Reported: LCC 1.0 — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 17:52 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — LCC 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    Update section 1.2, Overview to fix language and coverage issues

    This update affects text only, and provides a more accurate representation of the contents of the specification and related artifacts than the LCC 1.0 version of the document.

  • Updated: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:57 GMT

In country SB, URI for region type clashes with that of an actual region

  • Key: LCC11-9
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Adaptive ( Mr. Pete Rivett)
  • Summary:

    The region/type has URI of &lcc-3166-2-sb;CapitalTerritory.
    Since the full namefor the subdivision is "Capital Territory (Honiara)" the proposal is to make the URI into &lcc-3166-2-sb;CapitalTerritoryHoniara.

  • Reported: LCC 1.0 — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 08:03 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — LCC 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    Make the URI into CapitalTerritoryHoniara

    Since the full name for the subdivision is "Capital Territory (Honiara)" the proposal is to make the URI into &lcc-3166-2-sb;CapitalTerritoryHoniara.

    In the specification, add a row to the table C-2 as follows, after the row for MZ-MPM:
    SB-CT CapitalTerritoryHoniara

  • Updated: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:57 GMT
  • Attachments:

Definitions of Languages in 3166-2 ontology refer to language codes

  • Key: LCC11-8
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Adaptive ( Mr. Pete Rivett)
  • Summary:

    The definitions for ALL the Languages in 639-2 say "Language code for X language", rather than "X language". The question is what to do when it's a family. We don't want to say "Batak languages language". The proposal is to say X family if it's of class LanguageFamily e.g. Batak languages family".

  • Reported: LCC 1.0 — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 07:59 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — LCC 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    Update skos:definitions for language individuals in 639-2

    The skos:definition will depend on the class of the language individual. Assuming the label is X then the definition will be:
    class IndividualLanguage: X language
    class LanguageFamily: X family
    class RemainderGroup: X remainder group
    class SpecialPurposeLanguageConcept: X special purpose language concept

  • Updated: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:57 GMT
  • Attachments:

sameAs links missing between some Subdivisions and Countries

  • Key: LCC11-29
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Adaptive ( Mr. Pete Rivett)
  • Summary:

    There are 7 gaps where the ontology is missing sameAs links where a subdivision of one country has a country code in its own right. The comments in the ISO XML file make clear that these should be linked but the XML file is missing the <subdivision-related-country> elements that normally (in the 22 other cases) accompany such comments, and which the automated processing relied on.
    The gaps are for:
    CN/TaiwanSheng
    CN-HongKongSAR
    CN/MacaoSAR
    FR/Guyane
    FR/Martinique
    NO/JanMayen
    NO/Svalbard

  • Reported: LCC 1.0 — Tue, 5 Mar 2019 19:57 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — LCC 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    Add the missing sameAs links

    Three OWL Regions files are affected: for CN, FR, NO.
    Note that, as for the existing sameAs regions, the labels on the subdivision are suppressed in order to avoid failing restrictions when combined with those on the Country.

  • Updated: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:57 GMT
  • Attachments:

Specification and Module files do not link to their parts

  • Key: LCC11-26
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Adaptive ( Mr. Pete Rivett)
  • Summary:

    The Specification file AboutLCC should link to the module files AboutLanguages and About Countries and each should link to their ontologies, all using dct:hasPart (as per FIBO)

  • Reported: LCC 1.0 — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 16:15 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — LCC 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    Create hierarchical structure and update metadata files for 1.1

    The hierarchical structure uses dct:hasPart. A new file AboutRegions is needed.

  • Updated: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:57 GMT
  • Attachments:

The addition of the language tags (LCC-2) introduced a logical inconsistency that must be corrected

  • Key: LCC11-24
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Thematix Partners LLC ( Mrs. Elisa F. Kendall)
  • Summary:

    Adding the language tags to the individuals created an inconsistency when running a reasoner over the set of ontologies that include the reference data. This is due to the fact that one cannot use a language tag with a datatype property whose range is xsd:string in OWL 2 / RDF 1.1. Rather, the range must be either rdfs:Literal or rdf:langString in order to tag individuals with a particular language.

    The language tags are quite useful, and were requested by the LCC user community, so the correction needs to be made to the LanguageRepresentation and CountryRepresentation ontologies to enable use of the tags.

  • Reported: LCC 1.0 — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 02:49 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — LCC 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    Revise the base language and country representation ontologies to use rdfs:Literal rather than xsd:string in properties for names

    The RDF 1.1 specification introduced a new type for inclusion of language tagged strings in vocabularies, called rdf:langString. This datatype is not compatible with xsd:string. In the case of properties for language and country names, the original ontologies used xsd:string in the range and in class restrictions on Language and Country that became logically inconsistent when the language tags were introduced in the individuals.

    This resolution changes the property range(s) and related restrictions from using xsd:string to rdfs:Literal, which is the common parent of xsd:string and rdf:langString, thus eliminating the inconsistency.

  • Updated: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:57 GMT
  • Attachments:

Create metadata files for LCC version 1.1

  • Key: LCC11-19
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Adaptive ( Mr. Pete Rivett)
  • Summary:

    This constitutes a 1.1 directory and About files.

  • Reported: LCC 1.0 — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 00:19 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — LCC 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    Create the 1.1 metadata files

    Update the references in the specification.

  • Updated: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:57 GMT
  • Attachments:

There are cases that are syntactically incorrect in the country codes ontology with respect to having both language tags and a datatype of xsd:string

  • Key: LCC11-7
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Thematix Partners LLC ( Mrs. Elisa F. Kendall)
  • Summary:

    According to the RDF specification, a string can be typed as xsd:string if it does not contain a language tag, but must be typed rdf:langString if it includes a language tag. See https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-rdf-schema-20140225/#ch_langstring for details.

    Currently, our country codes ontologies (those including the named individuals) have both a language tag and are typed as xsd:string, for various hasName properties, which should be corrected.

    This applies strictly to the machine readable files, with no impact on the specification document itself.

  • Reported: LCC 1.0 — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 22:10 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — LCC 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    Remove rdf:type=&xsd;string where there is a xml:lang language tag

    Make the change in the ISO-3166 ontologies.

  • Updated: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:57 GMT
  • Attachments:

Provide capability to reference countries and regions using their code

  • Key: LCC11-4
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Adaptive ( Mr. Pete Rivett)
  • Summary:

    Many external datasets reference countries using their 2 character code. These can be very large sets (e.g. the GLEIF dataset which covers more than a million legal entities, each with a jurisdiction and up to 5 addresses).
    To transform them to RDF referencing the Country in LCC requires a reverse lookup of the code to find the LCC URI which is based on the country name. For conversion of large sets this could be very expensive. It would be far more convenient to have a URI based on the code which could be used in the dataset with no lookup needed. I have already generated such a set of URIs with sameAs triples linking them to the normative LCC URIs.
    The problem is worse for region codes where the reverse lookup would need to be in one of 200 different ontologies (one per country). I have generated a single file of sameAs triples covering all the regions.

    Rather than people such as myself independently doing this on an ad hoc basis, these 2 files should be officially published by OMG as an optional part of LCC.

  • Reported: LCC 1.0 — Wed, 6 Feb 2019 18:18 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — LCC 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    Create new Informative adjunct ontologies and document in the spec

    The adjunct ontologies are simply created by processing the RDF files for ISO3166-1, and all the ISO3166-2 SUbdivisions and for each Country/Subdivision creating a sameAs triple linking its URI with one based on the code.
    For example :
    <lcc-cr:CountrySubdivision rdf:about="&lcc-3166-2-adj;US-DE">
    <owl:sameAs rdf:resource="http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/Countries/Regions/ISO3166-2-SubdivisionCodes-US/Delaware"/>
    </lcc-cr:CountrySubdivision>

  • Updated: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:57 GMT
  • Attachments:

Annex B lists the country region code ontologies as normative, but a few of these have changed since the 1.0 release

  • Key: LCC11-12
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Thematix Partners LLC ( Mrs. Elisa F. Kendall)
  • Summary:

    The set of URIs and country names should be updated to reflect the latest set of countries and related region ontologies per the U.N. revisions (e.g., Eswatini, formerly Swaziland) in Annex B; the reference to the ODM XMI and UML XMI at the end of the annex should be updated per the decision not to include these artifacts as a part of the specification, though they can be generated from the RDF/XML as needed for any implementation.

  • Reported: LCC 1.0 — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 18:04 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — LCC 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    Change name of Swaziland to Eswatini in Annex B

    Change the country name.
    (Note that the rows are ordered by country code which has not changed, so the entry does not need to be moved).

  • Updated: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:57 GMT

The language and country codes have been updated by ISO and should be revised accordingly in LCC

  • Key: LCC11-3
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Thematix Partners LLC ( Mrs. Elisa F. Kendall)
  • Summary:

    The LCC language codes should be maintained on a regular basis when such changes are made by the Library of Congress (the registration authority for the language codes for ISO 639-2).

    The country codes should also be maintained on a regular basis when revised by the UN / ISO working group.

    This applies strictly to the machine readable files.

  • Reported: LCC 1.0 — Fri, 4 May 2018 23:53 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — LCC 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    Update the individuals based on the latest files from ISO

    For ISO-3166, the latest ISO XML file dated Feb 14th, 2019 was automatically processed (using XSLT, checked into GitHub) to create regenerated ISO3166-1-CountryCodes and Regions/ISO3166-2-SubdivisionCodes-CC files which included updated metadata such as new versionIRIs.

    For M49 the latest spreadsheet was diffed with the previously used one: the only change needed was renaming of Swaziland to Eswatini. The change to North Macedonia was not applied due to it not yet being recognized by ISO.

    For ISO-639 the list of changes https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_changes.php from the official Library of Congress site was manually processed.

    Revised text:
    1. In Table 7.2, on page 12, revise the 3rd line in the table (a) from 'lcc-spc-1.0-reg' to 'lcc-spc-1.1-reg', and (b) from 'http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/1.0/AboutLCC-1.0/' to 'http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/1.0/AboutLCC-1.1/'.

    2. In paragraph 8.2, Module:Languages, first bullet, change '630-4' to '639-4'

    3. In Table 8.4: ISO 639-1 Language Codes Ontology Metadata, (a) change the owl:versionIRI from 'http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/20170801/Languages/ISO639-1-LanguageCodes/' to 'http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/20190201/Languages/ISO639-1-LanguageCodes', and (b) add the following change note at the end of the table, under the existing change note: ' skos:changeNote The http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/20190201/Languages/ISO639-1-LanguageCodes.rdf version of this ontology is current as of 14 February 2019, based on the US Library of Congress site.'

    4. In Table 8.5: ISO 639-2 Language Codes Ontology Metadata, (a) change the owl:versionIRI from 'http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/20170801/Languages/ISO639-2-LanguageCodes/' to 'http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/20190201/Languages/ISO639-2-LanguageCodes', and (b) add the following change note at the end of the table, under the existing change note: ' skos:changeNote The http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/20190201/Languages/ISO639-2-LanguageCodes.rdf version of this ontology has been revised to reflect addition of the languages Standard Moroccan Tamazight (code zgh) and Montenegrin (code cnr). The codes themselves are current as of 14 February 2019, based on the US Library of Congress site.'

    5. In Table 9.4: ISO 3166-1 Country Codes Ontology Metadata, (a) change the owl:versionIRI from 'http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/20170801/Countries/ISO3166-1-CountryCodes/' to 'http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/20190201/Countries/ISO3166-1-CountryCodes/', (b) add the following change note at the end of the table, under the existing change note: 'skos:changeNote The http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/20190201/Countries/ISO3166-1-CountryCodes.rdf version of this ontology has been revised to reflect the issues addressed by the LCC 1.1 FTF report. The country codes and related metadata contained herein are current as of the February 2019 revision to the online code set.', and (c) change 'dct:issues' to 'dct:issued' and '2017-07-20T22:26:02.631805+02:00' to '2019-02-14T00:48:51.124818+01:00'.

    6. In Table 9.6: M49 Region Codes Ontology Metadata, (a) change the owl:versionIRI from 'http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/20170801/Countries/UN-M49-RegionCodes/' to 'http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/20190201/Countries/UN-M49-RegionCodes/', (b) add the following change note to the table: 'skos:changeNote The http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/20190201/Countries/UN-M49-RegionCodes/ version of this ontology has been revised to reflect the issues addressed by the LCC 1.1 FTF report. The country codes and related metadata contained herein are current as of the February 2019 revision to the online code set.', and (c) add the following issuance date after the new change note: 'dct:issued 2019-02-14T22:26:02.631805+02:00'

  • Updated: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:57 GMT
  • Attachments:

There is a request for us to add the language tags to the natural language specific properties for language codes

  • Key: LCC11-2
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Thematix Partners LLC ( Mrs. Elisa F. Kendall)
  • Summary:

    ISO639-1-LanguageCodes.rdf: add lang tags to
    lcc-lr:hasEnglishName
    lcc-lr:hasFrenchName
    lcc-lr:hasGermanName

    Note: this applies to the machine readable files primarily.

  • Reported: LCC 1.0 — Fri, 4 May 2018 23:50 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — LCC 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    Add the language tags to the Languages

    In ISO639-1-LanguageCodes.rdf and ISO639-2-LanguageCodes.rdf: add xml:lang tags to
    lcc-lr:hasEnglishName
    lcc-lr:hasFrenchName
    lcc-lr:hasGermanName

    And remove the rdf:datatype=&xsd;string.

  • Updated: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:57 GMT
  • Attachments:

The conformance section of the specification is weak

  • Key: LCC11-1
  • Status: closed  
  • Source: Thematix Partners LLC ( Mrs. Elisa F. Kendall)
  • Summary:

    There are a number of issues with the conformance section of the specification, including, but not limited to:

    (1). The following conformance point is not a complete sentence (if you ignore what's in parens): it ends “formally imports” without saying what.
    1. Specification-level conformance with the RDF/OWL ontologies, which means that the subject application formally imports (i.e., through owl:imports statements in another ontology or via loading the full set of ontologies for reference in a knowledge base that supports RDF/OWL);

    And the above duplicates the 2nd para labeled (1), so the duplication should be eliminated.

    (2) The use of “may not” in points 2 and 3 is ambiguous since it could be taken as meaning “shall not”. “Might not” would be clearer. And it’s compounded by the fact that we say ontology-level conformance entails linked-data-conformance but not that specification-level entails ontology-level.

    (3) Conformance point 3 seems pretty weak – could an application contain one LCC URL to be conformant? Does it even need to be derefenceable? Is this email conformant because I include http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/Countries/ISO3166-1-CountryCodes/Albania ? Or does it need to be the ontology itself i.e. http://www.omg.org/spec/LCC/Countries/ISO3166-1-CountryCodes/ ?

    (4) Maybe we should be saying something about applications that allow people to establish and follow links to LCC individuals, and continue to follow the links within LCC?

    (5) We also need to define “subject application”: is it an application or another (set of) ontologies that are conformant? Is FIBO conformant? Also item 4 refers to “another UML model”.

  • Reported: LCC 1.0b1 — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 17:27 GMT
  • Disposition: Resolved — LCC 1.1
  • Disposition Summary:

    Update the Conformance Clause

    In Clause 2, Conformance

    • In the first paragraph replace “These fall into the following categories” by “These are as follows:”
    • remove 2nd paragraph starting (1) which duplicates the bullet beneath labelled 1.
    • in bullet 1, add the following after "formally imports": “all the LCC ontologies” and add the following at the end: “with no resulting logical inconsistencies”
    • in bullet 2, replace “but may not import all of them” by “with no resulting logical inconsistencies”
    • in bullet 3, replace “, but may not formally import, one or more of the LCC ontologies” by “one or more of the LCC ontologies or individuals”
    • delete bullet 4
    • in the last paragraph replace “In all four (4) cases, implementers” by “For any conformance point, any references to individuals must use, or provide a mapping to, the standard LCC URI, and any properties accessed or stored within the scope of LCC must use or provide a mapping to the standard LCC URI. Implementers ”
  • Updated: Tue, 8 Oct 2019 17:57 GMT