[tdwg-content] Add a Full Example: Re: Public comment on the Darwin Core RDF Guide

[Bob Morris]

Ah, Steve, your examples well illustrate the reason to avoid assigning
rdfs:domain, as well as why both are perfectly good illustrations
neither of which should be deprecated.  Communities of practice can
exploit either or both, and the only communities that are nailed are
those that labor under an rdfs:domain for such things as dwc:EventDate

Bob

On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 10:59 PM, Steve Baskauf
<steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
> Paul,
> That's exciting that you are trying to generate RDF using real data!
>
> I think we initially considered including something in the guide like
> what you have suggested, but the problem is that what constitutes "an
> Occurrence record" varies depending on the model one has in mind when
> serializing the record as RDF.  Historically, "occurrences" were
> considered to be a superclass that included specimens, and any property
> remotely related to a specimen could be included as part of an
> occurrence record.  A provider exposing an occurrence record might give
> it properties such as dwc:eventDate, dwc:preparations, and
> dwc:locality.  However, a different provider might consider
> dwc:eventDate to be the property of a dwc:Event instance,
> dwc:preparations to be the property of a dwc:PreservedSpecimen, and
> dwc:locality to be the property of a dcterms:Location instance and link
> those instances to a separate Occurrence instance via object properties.
>
> Which of these is correct?  At this point there is no consensus as to
> whether one of these approaches is better than the other.  We avoided
> putting extensive examples within the guide document itself, since the
> guide will become part of the standard and will probably not be changed
> frequently, whereas best practices for deciding the types of resources
> with which properties should be associated is likely to develop over
> time and with the experience of usage.  For that reason, we have
> included examples in the ancillary documents that are associated with
> the guide, but which do not form part of the standard.  The "examples
> using 'pure' Darwin Core" [1] and "Examples using Darwin-SW object
> properties" [2] illustrate the extremes that I've described above.
>
> Steve
>
> [1] https://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/DwcRdfOccurrences
> [2] https://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/DwcRdfExamplesDarwinSW
>
> Paul J. Morris wrote:
>> As I've been working through implementing RDF generation in a few
>> applications and seeking to conform to the guide, I've found myself
>> spending a good bit of time hunting through the document looking for
>> guidance on particular situations, this leads me to a suggestion for
>> the guide: Include, at the end of the guide, a single comprehensive
>> example of an Occurrence record, annotated to point to relevant
>> sections in the guide.  This could serve both to quickly answer
>> questions and as a visual index to the rest of the guide.
>>
>> -Paul
>>
>
> --
> Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
> Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
>
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-- 
Robert A. Morris

Emeritus Professor  of Computer Science
UMASS-Boston
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Boston, MA 02125-3390


Filtered Push Project
Harvard University Herbaria
Harvard University

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