Portable self-describing representations of measurements

A method for representing a measurement of an aspect of a physical object as a measurement statement about the physical object and including the measurement statement in host electronic content, the method comprising:

• parsing at least the measurement statement to electronically represent the measurement statement of the physical object as a measurement statement object including a plurality of computer-processable data objects comprising:
• an entity object representing the physical object;
• an aspect object representing the aspect of the physical object for which the measurement is made;
• and
• a value object representing a value of the measurement made on the aspect of the physical object;
• and
• including the measurement statement for the physical object as a text entity in the host electronic content, wherein:
• a human reader of the host electronic content can read the text entity to understand the measurement statement;
• the measurement statement is retrievable on command separately from other content in the host electronic content;
• the host electronic content is not a compilable programming language;
• and
• the plurality of computer-processable data objects of the measurement statement object electronically representing the measurement statement facilitate at least one of computation, validation, searching, and reporting relating to the measurement of the aspect of the physical object, and
• wherein:
• the physical object has a kind and a part;
• and
• at least a portion of the measurement statement corresponding to the entity object is formatted as a computer-processable structured resource descriptor (SRD) comprising:
• an entity identifier identifying the physical object;
• and at least one of:
• a first operator specifying the kind of the physical object;
• and
• a second operator specifying the part of the physical object, and
• wherein the SRD further comprises:
• a third operator specifying the aspect of the physical object for which the measurement is made;
• an aspect identifier identifying the aspect of the physical object for which the measurement is made;
• and
• a value identifier identifying the value of the measurement of the aspect of the physical object, and
• wherein:
• the first operator specifying the kind of the physical object is a colon “:”;
• the second operator specifying the part of the physical object is a backslash “/”;
• and the third operator specifying the aspect of the physical object is a period “.”, and
• wherein the SRD further comprises:
• a kind identifier identifying the kind of the physical object;
• and a part identifier identifying the part of the physical object,
• such that the SRD has the form:
• “entity identifier:kind identifier/part identifier.aspect identifier=value identifier”.