| [railML3] Adding globally unique identifiers [message #3776] |
Wed, 29 October 2025 11:36  |
Mathias Vanden Auweele
Messages: 88
Registered: February 2025
Location: Brussels
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Dear railML community
On 28/10/2025 a Bane NOR / railML workgroup took place were the need was acknowledged to have globally unique identifiers in railML files.
Currently, many xml elements can receive an @ID. But that @ID is only to be used within the boundaries of the railML file and not beyond. Many systems do not retain these ID's after ingestion and will not export the same IDs again even if they would export the same data. This creates a problem for round-trip data exchange where system A exports a current state of the infrastructure, system B imports that state and allows users to change the data to be exported again and imported into system A.
Designators can be used in some cases to identify the entities in a globally unique way. But those rely on the existence of registers and are not always a good fit for elements such as in <Geometry> and <Topology>, let alone for elements that are regarded more as properties such as <LinearLocation> and even <AssociatedNetElement>.
Another possibility would be to extend the @ID attribute to all elements and change the semantics so that this ID also holds value outside of the railML file.
But maybe it would be better to look at the evolution that is happening with knowledge graphs and ontologies. There the usage of globally unique identifiers is by means of URI's, some examples:
http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/country/NOR
http://data.europa.eu/949/functionalInfrastructure/operation alPoints/NO0010-01000
What does the community think? We would like to propose this change for railML 3.4
Mathias Vanden Auweele
Railway data freelancer
https://matdata.eu
Brussels, Belgium
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