Built on explicit agreements

MODAVIS connects complementary standards rather than asking one format to do everything. The ontology describes meaning and relationships. VAO binds digital resources into an exchange and preservation contract. Repositories supply persistent version records.

Established media and research-object formats remain useful within this architecture. A VAO is an integration envelope; it does not replace an audio format, a repository or a domain ontology.

The agreement at each boundary#

These agreements address different kinds of interoperability. Two applications can read the same audio encoding while disagreeing about which instrument state the recording represents. Two catalogues can use the same label while assigning it to different concepts. Interoperability therefore requires both usable bytes and an explicit account of their meaning.

Reuse established formats inside the envelope#

VAO can identify realizations in established media and research formats, such as WAVE or FLAC audio, glTF geometry and MIDI or score data. The carrier adds the relationships, fixed identities and declared capabilities needed to interpret those realizations together. The chosen format still carries its own technical requirements; packaging a file does not make an incompatible renderer understand it.

Version the contract as carefully as the content#

Record the exact schema, profile and vocabulary versions used by a release. A moving “latest” pointer can be convenient for discovering documentation, but it cannot identify the rules under which an earlier package was prepared. When migrating, keep the source release available and describe what changed. A successful migration creates an attributable successor rather than retroactively rewriting the old contract.