Mapping Data Models to VOTable

Data providers and curators provide a great deal of metadata with their data files. This metadata is invaluable for users and for Virtual Observatory software developers. In order to be interoperable, the metadata must refer to common data models. A new specification is being developed by the IVOA Data Modeling Working Group to define a scheme for annotating VOTable instances in a standard, consistent, interoperable fashion, so that each piece of metadata can unambiguously refer to the correct data model element it expresses. The mapping can be extended to formats other than VOTable.