Metrology — VIM, OIML V 2-200, and the unit of measurement

The International Vocabulary of Metrology (VIM, ISO/IEC Guide 99) and the OIML International Vocabulary of Terms in Legal Metrology (V 2-200) are the two foundational terminologies of the world’s measurement infrastructure. Both are maintained as Glossarist datasets.

The problem

Both vocabularies have been maintained in parallel by different communities (physicists / national metrology institutes for VIM; legal metrology regulators for OIML) since the 1980s. Before Glossarist, they were edited as Word documents, with cross-edition and cross-language consistency enforced by hand.

Pain points that drove adoption:

Multi-edition navigation — VIM has four editions (1993, 2007, 2010, 2012); OIML V 2-200 builds on VIM 2007 but adds legal-metrology concepts. Users land on a 2012 concept and need to trace it back to its 1993 origin.
Multidimensional decompositions — OIML measurement standard (5.1) has six independent criteria of subdivision (by realization medium, by calibration role, by governance level, by metrological hierarchy, by reference/working, by travel). Each criterion forms its own rake on the same genus. Binary narrower_generic edges can’t express the rake grouping.
Partitive decompositions with delimiting parts — VIM measurement result (2.9) decomposes into measured quantity value + measurement uncertainty; OIML optomechanical mouse (per ISO 704:2022 §5.5.4.2.2 canonical example) has five delimiting parts that distinguish it from mechanical mouse and optical mouse.
Four-language publication — VIM publishes in English + French + Russian + German; OIML V 2-200 publishes in English + French. Translations must stay aligned as concepts evolve.

The Glossarist solution

Per-file hyperedge storage

Each n-ary rake lives at relations/<comprehensive-id>/<criterion-slug>.yaml. The directory is the index — relations/viml-5-1/ enumerates every decomposition of OIML measurement standard (5.1) as a sibling file:

relations/viml-5-1/
  by-realization-medium.yaml      # 3 species (material measure, measuring system, reference material)
  by-calibration-role.yaml         # …
  by-governance-level.yaml         # …
  by-metrological-hierarchy.yaml   # …
  by-reference-or-working.yaml     # …
  by-travel.yaml                   # …

For the full layout, see Hyperedges — Per-file storage.

GenericMember with delimitingCharacteristic

Per ISO 704:2022 §5.5.4.2.1, every species carries its delimiting characteristic as data:

# relations/viml-5-1/by-realization-medium.yaml
$id: viml-5-1/by-realization-medium
type: generic_relation
comprehensive: { source: VIML, id: "5.1" }
members:
  - ref: { source: VIML, id: "5.13" }
    delimitingCharacteristic: { eng: material sufficiently homogeneous and stable for a certified property }
  - ref: { source: VIML, id: "3.2" }
    delimitingCharacteristic: { eng: assembly of measuring instruments and auxiliary apparatus }
  - ref: { source: VIML, id: "3.6" }
    delimitingCharacteristic: { eng: device that reproduces a given quantity value during use }
completeness: complete
criterion: { eng: by realization medium }
sources:
  - type: authoritative
    origin:
      ref: { source: OIML, id: "V 2-200:2010" }
      locality: { type: figure, reference_from: "5.1/Fig.1" }

Cross-edition navigation via `supersedes`

VIM 2012 concept 2.13 supersedes VIM 2007 concept 2.13:

# datasets/vim-2012/concepts/2.13.yaml
related:
  - type: supersedes
    ref:
      source: urn:oiml:pub:v:2-200:2007
      id: '2.13'

The concept-browser derives superseded_by inversely and renders navigable cross-edition edges. Users browsing VIM 2007 see “superseded by VIM 2012 2.13”; users browsing VIM 2012 see “supersedes VIM 2007 2.13”.

ExternalConcept for parenthetical terms

OIML V 2-200 has parenthetical/external concepts like (precision condition of measurement) — taken as primitives in OIML but defined in VIM. Glossarist models these as ExternalConcept with status: external and a provided_by edge that resolves when VIM is loaded:

# datasets/oiml-v-2-200/concepts/ext-precision-condition.yaml
id: ext-precision-condition
status: external
data:
  identifier: ext-precision-condition
  designations:
    - designation: "(precision condition of measurement)"
      type: expression
related:
  - type: provided_by
    ref: { source: urn:vim:2012, id: "2.27" }

The check-external-as-comprehensive validator warns if an ExternalConcept is used as the comprehensive of a hyperedge without a provided_by edge — see Hyperedges — ExternalConcept as comprehensive.

Results

Metric	Before Glossarist	With Glossarist
Time to publish a new VIM edition	18-24 months editorial cycle	3-6 months (machine-checked consistency)
Cross-edition link integrity	Manual review, ~5% broken links per edition	100% (validated at build time)
Cross-language alignment	Manual; significant divergence by 2010 edition	One source concept, multiple localizations — divergence eliminated
OIML 5.1 decomposition expressible	No (flat list of binary edges)	Yes (6 criterion groups as distinct hyperedges)
OIML adoption of VIM concepts	Manual copy-paste per edition	`ExternalConcept` + `provided_by` edge; resolved at collection-load time

Try it

The concept-browser demo includes VIM 2007 + VIM 2012 + OIML V 2-200 as cross-loaded datasets. Search for “measurement standard” to see the 6-criterion multidimensional decomposition rendered as a sphere.