This is an extension to "#358 Correspondence Table". We should activate "Format" for a String dimension, with the most obvious Format being "Country". In that specific case, this would:
(1) Enable 2-digit, 3-digit and complete country names to all be recognised as the same in an import process. So the inputted data would be checked against a Correspondence Table to make sure each entry was correct in either 2-digit, 3-digit, or full country name;
(2) Let the user specify which form to use when displaying the data within Ravel
This would have application for large-scale commercial users of Ravel, if we allowed them to create their own Correspondence Tables. A company could create a Format type for String like "Product", and then create a table (or load one from Excel) linking, say, Product Code, and Product Name.
Another obvious formas that should be built in:
"Currency"--where there would be the language version ("United States Dollar"), the symbol ($--but this would need some cleverness so that $ for the USD was distinguished from $ for the AUD), and an accepted abbreviation (USD).
Yet another: Company. This would relate company codes on stock exchanges to company names. I could see this being very useful to our parasites (I'm sorry, I meant friends) in the finance sector.
What I have called Country should be a subset of a format type called Geography (Excel has just implemented this). The top of the hierarchy would be Continent (unless we actually manage to colonise Mars); then Country; State; City.
That plus Company would be enough for the first release of Ravel. Future releases would support crosslinking Formats, so Company could be linked to Country when, for example, a user was working with the NYSE.
Ticket moved from /p/minsky/ravel/394/