Identification information contains information to uniquely identify the data. Identification information includes information about the citation for the resource, an abstract, the purpose, credit, the status and points of contact. The {@linkplain org.opengis.metadata.identification.Identification identification} entity is mandatory. It may be specified (subclassed) as {@linkplain org.opengis.metadata.identification.DataIdentification data identification} when used to identify data and as {@linkplain org.opengis.metadata.identification.ServiceIdentification service identification} when used to identify a service. {@linkplain org.opengis.metadata.identification.Identification} is an aggregate of the following entities:
The {@linkplain org.opengis.metadata.identification.DataIdentification#getGeographicBox geographic box} and {@linkplain org.opengis.metadata.identification.DataIdentification#getGeographicDescription geographic description} elements of {@linkplain org.opengis.metadata.identification.DataIdentification data identification} are conditional; one of them shall be included if the dataset is spatially referenced. If necessary both may be used.