Is 04.05 April or May?
Two teams send each other a sheet of sales. One writes 04.05.2026 for the 4th of May. The other reads it as the 5th of April. The charts do not match.
This is not luck. It is why groups of experts write standards, and why makers follow them.
Key words
| Word | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | an agreed way of making or doing something | |
| Protocol | an agreed set of rules for how devices talk | |
| Compatible | able to work together | |
| Accessibility | making things usable by people with disabilities | |
| Payment card | a debit or credit card | |
| CSV | a plain text file where each line is a row and commas split the columns | |
| Network | computers and devices linked together | |
| Ethernet | the usual wired way to link devices on a network | |
| Dashboard | one screen of charts and numbers that shows how things are going | |
| Format | the agreed way something is laid out | year-month-day for a date |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
By the end of this lesson
Note
I can match a standards body to the kind of standard it sets.
Starter: last lesson
Have a go
Starter: last lesson
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
Standards let different things work together
A standard is an agreed way to do something. Without them, a file from one program might not open in another.
Standards help with three things: things are compatible, they are safe, and they are of good quality. Seven groups matter in this course.
Seven sources of standards
| Body | What it sets | Example for data work |
|---|---|---|
| ISO, International Organization for Standardization | Standards in many fields worldwide | ISO 8601 for dates. ISO 27001 for information security |
| W3C, World Wide Web Consortium | Standards for the web | HTML and CSS for the pages that show a dashboard |
| WCAG, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines | Rules to make web content accessible | Enough colour contrast in a chart. Text alternatives for images |
| IETF, Internet Engineering Task Force | Internet protocols, written as RFCs | The rules for HTTP. RFC 4180 describes the CSV file |
| BS, British Standards, from BSI | UK standards | BS 7671, the UK wiring rules |
| IEEE, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers | Electrical and network standards | Ethernet and Wi-Fi. IEEE 754 for decimal numbers |
| PCI SSC, Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council | Rules for taking card payments safely | PCI DSS says how card numbers in sales data are kept safe |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
Why a standard date helps
-- Which order is right: oldest first?
SELECT day_text FROM sales ORDER BY day_text;
SELECT day_iso FROM sales ORDER BY day_iso;Check
Have a go
Check
4 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.