Frictionless Standards

Developed by the Open Knowledge Foundation, the frictionless standards are a set of patterns for describing data, including datasets (Data Package), files (Data Resource), and tables (Table Schema). A Data Package is a simple container format used to describe and package a collection of data and metadata, including schemas. These metadata are contained in a specific file (separate from the data file), usually written in JSON or YAML, that describes something specific to each Frictionless Standard:

Table Schema: describes a tabular file by providing its dimension, field data types, relations, and constraints
Data Resource: describes an exact tabular file providing a path to the file and details like title, description, and others
Tabular Data Resource = Data Resource + Table Schema
CSV dialect: describes the formatting specific to the various dialects of CSV files
Data Package & Tabular Data Package: describes a collection of tabular files providing data resource information from above along with general information about the package itself, a license, authors, and other metadata

See the CoDEC standards to read more about the CoDEC specifications for data, metadata, and file structure.