Glossary · Packages and variants

iiRDS Generator

Also known as: iiRDS-generating application, iiRDS export

In iiRDS (intelligent information Request and Delivery Standard), an iiRDS Generator is an application that creates iiRDS-compliant information from a source format such as XML or Word. It is a role defined in the specification's terms and definitions, not an RDF class of the iiRDS vocabulary.

iiRDS term
Ontology
Information architecture

In one sentence

An iiRDS Generator is the application that creates iiRDS packages from source formats such as XML or Word: content, metadata.rdf and the .iirds ZIP archive.

Example

The export module of a component content management system that turns the DITA topics for machine model X200 into renditions, writes META-INF/metadata.rdf and zips everything into machine-x200_en.iirds.

In-depth wiki articleiiRDS Generator: the software role that creates iiRDS packages

How it applies

Role, not class: The specification defines the generator as a conformance role for software. There is no iirds:Generator class; which application produced a package is not part of the vocabulary unless it is modeled separately, for example as a Party.
What it produces: A generator writes a package that follows the container rules — META-INF/metadata.rdf in RDF/XML, content only in subdirectories — and delivers it as an iiRDS ZIP archive with the extension .iirds.
Metadata rules: Generators must not use iirds:InformationUnit directly but one of its subclasses, and every information unit must have an IRI, never a blank node. The specification recommends absolute IRIs that are globally unique, stable across packages and time, and derived from a meaningful source ID such as a CMS module ID.
Custom vocabulary: Where iiRDS does not standardize a term, such as component names, the generator adds it through docking points and proprietary extensions, which must themselves comply with the standard.
Out of scope: The standard specifies the package and metadata formats, not how a generator is implemented. Producing an iiRDS package says nothing about the correctness of the documentation inside it.

Generator vs. Consumer

The generator sits on the sending side and creates the package; the iiRDS Consumer sits on the receiving side and reads and processes it. The same system can play both roles, for example a portal that imports supplier packages and re-exports merged documentation.

In RDF

What a generator writes at minimum: one Package with exactly one iiRDS version, and information units typed with a concrete subclass and identified by an IRI. Shown in Turtle for readability — inside a package, metadata.rdf is written in RDF/XML.

@prefix iirds: <http://iirds.tekom.de/iirds#> .

<https://example.com/iirds/packages/machine-x200> a iirds:Package ;
    iirds:iiRDSVersion "1.3" .

<https://example.com/iirds/topics/replace-air-filter> a iirds:Topic ;
    iirds:is-part-of-package <https://example.com/iirds/packages/machine-x200> .