Data improvements: FAQs
Data improvements: Frequently asked questions
This is the official FAQ page for support relating to the latest data updates from Oxford Languages.
The recent improvements introduced to our data have been described extensively in our accompanying documentation. These changes affect any data deliveries from November 2022 onwards. On this page, you will be able to find a regularly updated list of frequently asked questions that relate to these data changes.
The improvements are changes in specific parts of our XML data structure, such as the removal, replacement, and addition of elements, tags or attributes, leading to some differences from previous versions of the data.
Our aim for these changes is to make your experience with our data as straightforward as possible. We accomplish this by making our datasets better organized, more consistent within and across languages, more clear and explicit, and more computer-readable.
Please refer to the detailed notes that were supplied with the data delivery. If you do not have access to these, please contact our Customer Success representatives at: [email protected]
At this time, the improvements affect Oxford Dictionary of English (ODE), New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD), Oxford Thesaurus of English (OTE), as well as Italian and Dutch Monolingual Dictionaries.
Yes. The data release notes describing the data structure changes have been produced in addition to our usual content update programme. The content release notes describe content updates, which include editorial changes made to the dictionaries' contents, such as added or updated entries.
A larger volume of changes are present in this release, due to an intensive programme of work to rationalize and improve our data. We will continue to review and improve our data structures for future releases, while maintaining consideration for your ingestion and conversion needs.
In most cases, the links between the Oxford Thesaurus of English and the English dictionaries (Oxford Dictionary of English and the New Oxford American Dictionary) should not be affected by the changes. Depending on the features you use, there may be instances in which this could lead to some minor issues. This is something we are aware of and it will be resolved in the next update of the Oxford Thesaurus of English, in April 2023. Meanwhile, if you require any support on this, please get in touch with us.
For any further questions or additional support, please contact us at [email protected]