[tdwg-content] Expressing some relationships in DwC?
Steve Baskauf
steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu
Wed Oct 26 16:58:37 CEST 2011
I'm interested to see that the subject of the dwc:ResourceRelationship
class has come up again. I have lost track of the number of times I've
asked this question (I think it's somewhere around 4 times now) on the
list without an answer: can anyone show me a functioning example where
somebody is actually using the ResourceRelationship terms in any form?
I have previously concluded from lack of response that there isn't
actually anybody who has used them, but I would be happy to for someone
to show that I'm wrong.
If I am understanding the use of the ResourceRelationship terms
correctly (which I'm not at all sure about), dwc:resourceID represents
an identifier for the subject of the relationship, dwc:relatedResourceID
represents an identifier for the object of the relationship, and
resourceRelationshipID represents an identifier for an _instance_ of a
relationship which is further elaborated in the record for that instance
by providing a string value for relationshipOfResource (using a
controlled vocabulary) along with additional information about the
relationships (according to whom, date, remarks). What I think I'm
hearing in this thread is a desire to start using these terms more
widely and to improve interoperability by standardizing the vocabulary
used for relationshipOfResource. I also think I'm hearing that it would
be a good idea for values the xxID terms to be GUIDs.
So what I'm wondering is why doing that would be better than just
creating URI-identified object properties (a.k.a. predicates) that
describe the relationship between the object and subject? Using the
ResourceRelationship terms just makes "understanding" the relationship
harder by requiring that the data consumer "look up" the value of the
relationshipOfResource string for every instance of a relationship and
then figure out if it's the same kind of relationship as one that the
consumer already knows or cares about. As I see it, the bottom line is
that if we agree that it would be a best-practice for the xxID values to
be GUIDs (which would either be URIs or could be URIs that are proxied
UUIDs for UUID believers) and that the relationships should be
standardized, then the resource relationships boil down to RDF triples.
There's a URI for the subject, a URI for the object, and there could be
a URI for the relationshipOfResource which would have an rdfs:label
property that was the controlled value for the string that describes the
relationship. The only difference that I see is that the RDF triples
could be more efficient to handle.
Don't like RDF or are scared of it? Fine, make yourself an Excel
spreadsheet with three columns headed "subject", "predicate", and
"object" (or use your favorite database method). Put the appropriate
URI in each column. Viola! Resource relationships.
The one thing about implementing the ResourceRelationship class
vocabulary that I think may be an improvement is use of the generic
terms for "by whom", "date", and "remarks". At the present moment, we
are in the process of expanding DwC by adding class-specific terms to do
these things in nearly every class. We have recordedBy,
georeferencedBy, identifiedBy, occurrenceRemarks, locationRemarks,
eventDate, georeferencedDate, etc. rather than just using
relationshipAccordingTo, relationshipEstablishedDate, and
relationshipRemarks which could do the same thing generically in any
class. Add columns to the above-described Excel spreadsheet for
relationshipAccordingTo, relationshipEstablishedDate, and
relationshipRemarks if you want to track those things.
I think I understand why the ResourceRelationship class was created. It
seems like a way to move forward under the worse-case scenario where
GUIDs never get off the ground, where no one ever agrees what the core
biodiversity classes are, and where no one ever establishes object
properties that connect those classes. But if no one ever has the guts
to try to lay out the core classes and object properties that connect
them, then what good are a million unstandardized ResourceRelationship
instances that can't be unambiguously IDed? Nobody will ever be able to
figure out anything useful from them and Rod Page's prophecy of doom
will come true.
Somebody please show me where I'm wrong here...
Steve
Richard Pyle wrote:
> Hmmm.... watch out for that tricky word "valid". It means different things
> to botanists & zoologists. The term "accepted" is generally seen as a more
> code-neutral term to mean "valid" (sensu zoology) or "correct"/"accepted"
> (sensu botany). But if you mean "valid" in the botanical sense (="validly
> published", or "available" sensu zoology). I'm not entirely sure which
> sense of "valid" is meant in this context.
>
>
> More fundamentally, however, I'd like to report that a number of folks at
> TDWG seemed to have converged on the same idea that, perhaps, we should be
> using resourceRelationship more frequently (perhaps a *LOT* more
> frequently). A lot of these terms that effectively represent the functional
> equivalent to "foreign keys" might be better packaged in the more open-ended
> structure of resourceRelationship. In fact, at one of the sessions at TDWG
> (I believe it was at the AudubonCore break-out session), we discussed the
> idea of DwCA "2.0", which would essentially define n-number of "Cores", and
> then package the relationships among them via a set of resourceRelationship
> records. This idea emerged from a discussion about how people have been
> trying to "force" many-to-many sorts of data into the one-to-many DwCA
> format. The beauty of using a more generic resourceRelationship set for
> this function is that it allows one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many
> relationships all in one structure. It may seem klunky now, but if we used
> it as a general method to describe all relationships between instances of
> DwC "classes", it would become pretty straightforward, I think.
>
> Something to think about, anyway...
>
> Aloha,
> Rich
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-content-
>> bounces at lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Tony.Rees at csiro.au
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 4:34 PM
>> To: mdoering at gbif.org
>> Cc: tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
>> Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Expressing some relationships in DwC?
>>
>> Hi Markus,
>>
>> You wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I begin to wonder if a new term dwc:validNameUsageID would solve this
>>> issue gracefully and remove the need for a relationship extension.
>>>
>> Yes, I believe this would cover both the cases I need, I think, when
>> accompanied by nomenclatural status = misspelling / nomenclatural status =
>> nomen nudum... - comments, anyone?
>>
>> Cheers - Tony
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: "Markus Döring (GBIF)" [mdoering at gbif.org]
>> Sent: Wednesday, 26 October 2011 1:43 AM
>> To: Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart)
>> Cc: tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
>> Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Expressing some relationships in DwC?
>>
>> Hi Tony,
>> thanks for these practical questions. See inline for answers.
>> Markus
>>
>>
>>> I have a few nomenclatural relationships between name that I would like
>>>
> to
>
>> express using DwC, and would like to know the preferred way to do this if
>> any. The relationships are as follows:
>>
>>> (1) Point a nomen novum to the basionym it replaces. From reading there
>>>
>> was formerly a concept basionym/basionymID, apparently this is now
>> replaced with originalNameUsage/originalNameUsageID. So one quesiton is,
>> is this sufficient to infer this is a basionym, when accompanied by
>> noneclaturalStatus = 'nomen novum'?
>> yes, that is exactly right. As far as I understand the term basionym is
>>
> more of
>
>> a botanical term and was not used as the final dwc term therefore.
>>
>>
>>> (2) Point an orthographic variant to the name which it is a variant of
>>>
>> (whether or not the latter is now the accepted name). In other words, if
>> name A is a variant of name B which is now a synonym of name C, I capture
>> the A=>C relationship with a synonym assertion, but I want a way to
>> capteure the A=>B relationship too.
>> This is only possible with an extension I am afraid. For example the
>>
> generic
>
>> dwc relationship one:
>> http://rs.gbif.org/extension/dwc/resource_relation.xml
>>
>>
>>> (3) Point a nomen nudum to a validly published instance that comes later
>>>
>> (or do the same in reverse, i.e. this name was preceded by xxx as a nomen
>> nudum). Again, this should be independent of whether the validly published
>> name is an accepted name or now a synonym of something else.
>> same problem as above.
>> I begin to wonder if a new term dwc:validNameUsageID would solve this
>> issue gracefully and remove the need for a relationship extension.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Advice appreciated,
>>>
>>> Regards - Tony Rees
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> tdwg-content mailing list
>>> tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
>>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> tdwg-content mailing list
>> tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
>>
>
>
>
> This message is only intended for the addressee named above. Its contents may be privileged or otherwise protected. Any unauthorized use, disclosure or copying of this message or its contents is prohibited. If you have received this message by mistake, please notify us immediately by reply mail or by collect telephone call. Any personal opinions expressed in this message do not necessarily represent the views of the Bishop Museum.
> _______________________________________________
> tdwg-content mailing list
> tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content
>
> .
>
>
--
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
postal mail address:
VU Station B 351634
Nashville, TN 37235-1634, U.S.A.
delivery address:
2125 Stevenson Center
1161 21st Ave., S.
Nashville, TN 37235
office: 2128 Stevenson Center
phone: (615) 343-4582, fax: (615) 343-6707
http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/attachments/20111026/9f7d02b2/attachment.html
More information about the tdwg-content
mailing list