A communiqué from Alan Karben (Chairman, IPTC SportsML Effort) reports on the release of version 0.5 draft DTDs for the IPTC's Sports Markup Language (SportsML). The IPTC's design goal is to create a "cross-sport, cross-language XML standard for the interchange of sports data and statistics. SportsML supports the identification and description of several sports characteristics, including: (1) Scores: Who's winning, and how did the score change? (2) Schedules: Who's playing who, when, and where? (3) Standings: Who's in first place? Who's closest to qualifying for the championship? (4) Statistics: How do the players and/or teams measure up against one another in various categories? (5) News: How do we combine editorial coverage of sports with all these data feeds,and package metadata- and multimedia-filled articles together with sports data?" In addition to the 'sportsml-core.dtd', files containing the XML DTDs have names like 'specific-american-football.dtd', 'specific-baseball.dtd', 'specific-basketball.dtd', 'specific-golf.dtd', 'specific-ice-hockey.dtd', 'specific-soccer.dtd', and 'specific-tennis.dtd'. The DTDs, documentation, and sample documents are available for download.

SportsML description: "SportsML aims to be the global XML standard for the interchange of sports data. Designed to be as easy to understand and implement as possible, SportsML allows for the exchange of sports scores, schedules, standings, and statistics for a wide variety of competitions. Its extensibility allows for the easy accommodation of many sports from around the globe. SportsML cooperates with current IPTC standards NewsML and NITF to enable publishers to package sports statistics alongside edited coverage of sports. SportsML uses the eXtensible Markup Language to define the content and structure of sports data, which means that developers of interactive or printed sports data services will have a far easier time integrating sports feeds that adhere to SportsML than if they rely on other proprietary formats." [from the web site]

Authority lists: SportsML "includes the concept of a Resource File -- an externally-maintained listing of metadata codes, symbols, or choices -- which help partners to standardize on how they refer to different components of sports data. The IPTC is committed to maintaining several key Resource Files. However, users of SportsML are offered the option of maintaining their own Resource Files, should the IPTC offerings not meet their needs. SportsML includes (1) one set of Resource Files that are usable for all sports, and (2) Per-league Resource Files can be built to fill in league-specific metadata..."