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D2.3: Models

D2.3 Models
VCARDS

vCards

The vCard standard defines a format for electronic business cards intended for Personal Data Interchange (PDI), i.e. exchanging personal information between individuals. The current version 3.0 of the vCard specification, which has been developed by the Internet Mail Consortium, is defined in RFCs 2425 and 2426. The vCard specification is operating system independent; all information is stored in a file (usually recognisable by its extension “.vcf”) that is mainly text-based. VCards are supported by and used in various applications and contexts, such as Web browsers, email clients and Personal Information Managers.

A vCard may contain the following types of information:

Personal information, such as identification information (the name, nickname, and birthday of a person), addressing information (a person’s home, business and email addresses, various telephone numbers), and organisational information (the organisation a person is associated with, his title and role within the organisation).
Additional geographic information which may be useful when contacting the respective person, such as the time zone or geographical co-ordinates of the address where the person can usually be reached. This is usually static and does not indicate a person’s current location.
Additional multimedia information, such as a photography of the person or a sound file containing the correct pronunciation of the person’s name.

Table 1 shows an example of a vCard containing only text-based elements.

	BEGIN:VCARD
The version of the VCard specification.	VERSION:2.1
The name of the person (family name; given name; additional names; pre- and suffixes). Required entry.	N:Cissée;Richard
The formatted name. Required entry.	FN:Richard Cissée
The organisational name and units associated with the person.	ORG:DAI-Labor, TU Berlin
The person’s position or job title.	TITLE:Research Assistant
Various telephone numbers (possible types include voice, fax, mobile, business, home).	TEL;WORK;VOICE:030 /31473612 TEL;WORK;FAX:030 /31421799
Address information (again, different types of addresses are possible here).	ADR;WORK;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:;;Technische Universit=E4t Berlin / DAI-Labor=0D=0ASekretariat GOR1-1=0D=0AF=ranklinstrasse 28/29;Berlin;;10587;Deutschland
The URL associated with the person.	URL;WORK:http://www.dai-labor.de
The person’s email addresses.	EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:richard.cissee@dai-labor.de
The revision of the information contained in the vCard (a timestamp indicating the last modification).	REV:20050411T125131Z
	END:VCARD

Tableau : An Exemplary VCard

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