Definitions for "canonical"
Of or pertaining to a canon; established by, or according to, a canon or canons.
Appearing in a Biblical canon; as, a canonical book of the Christian New Testament.
Accepted as authoritative; recognized.
In its standard form, usually also the simplest form; -- of an equation or coordinate.
Reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality; as, a canonical syllable pattern. Opposite of nonstandard.
This term implies that something has been reduced to its simplest form (note that it also has a different religious meaning).
Keywords:  clergy, law, relating, required
of or relating to or required by canon law
Laws relating to the clergy.
A form of an XML document in which it can be compared against another document for equivalence. If two documents with differing physical representations have the same canonical form, they are considered logically equivalent within the given application context. The canonical form of an XML document is defined by the World Wide Web Consortium at http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-c14n.
"An accepted standard. In message modeling, it is the process of declaring a standard for message content rather than allowing each project to define its own."
Keywords:  established, authorized
established or authorized.