Extensible mark-up language file definition for structured acquisition data storage and transfer

In many measuring applications where several acquisitions are needed, resulting measurement data could be more useful if measuring information is included as part of resulting data. For example, in advanced measurement algorithms development, it is common to acquire large amounts of organized data that should be clearly identified for automatic post processing. This paper proposes a new eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML) file structure, to be used as a data log file in generic measurement procedures. Benefits like web easiness, low file size requirements and flexible handling by several software platforms are introduced. Specifically developed software to work with the proposed XML structure is presented and the typical acquisition and processing architecture is presented. To demonstrate the proposed XML structure ability, a simple application example applied to power quality assessment was developed. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.