<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<title></title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
Markus,<br>
Thanks for your input on this. I agree that working this out in the
ontology is important. My major concern is the rate at which this is
likely to happen. I had the impression that the ontology development
was being slowed by lack of resources and the progress that I've
noticed so far seems to be focused mainly on the taxonomy end. In some
sense the ontology has been overloaded in that it must not only define
the relationships among TDWG resources/entities but also must serve as
the mechanism for typing resources that have been assigned GUIDs
(assuming that the draft GUID applicability statement or something like
it is adopted in the near future). <br>
<br>
[For reference purposes, recommendation 11 of the draft TDWG GUID
Applicability Statement is:<br>
"Objects in the biodiversity informatics domain that are identified by
a GUID should be typed using the TDWG ontology or other well-known
vocabularies in accordance with the TDWG common architecture."]<br>
<br>
The adoption of GUIDs by the biodiversity community is already hampered
by the technical barriers created by the requirement that they be
actionable and that authorities must persist forever. So GUID adoption
doesn't need any more roadblocks beyond that. I would request that if
it is not possible to fully implement classes in the ontology that
correspond to all of the the xxxxxID terms in the Darwin Core standard,
then either create some kind of "placeholder" HTTP: URIs in the
ontology that can be used for the typing of GUIDs, or offload the role
of GUID typing from the ontology to something else (the "other
well-known vocabularies" of the recommendation). I do not like the
latter alternative, but people are not going to wait forever to start
creating GUIDs and since recommendation 11 is a "should" statement
rather than a "must" statement, if something isn't done about this soon
we will start seeing the appearance of untyped GUIDs, which is not a
good thing.<br>
<br>
Steve Baskauf<br>
<br>
Markus Döring wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:584D39C4-764D-478F-AECF-45F37B0BE636@mac.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Steve,
a very reasonable addition to DarwinCore indeed. But I tend to agree with John that we should first tackle this in the ontology development which is taking place right now mainly driven by Roger and Dave. Classes in DwC were created in a slightly ad hoc fashion based on what data we were already exchanging - primarily occurrences and taxonomic. So they are not covering all needs. But instead of quickly adding more classes one by one I would hope to get a better overview of required classes first. The current refactoring of the ontology is a perfect oppertunity for this. With the ontology developing we also need to make sure how to synchronise it with DwC terms. I can imagine that it turns out best to add new ontology classes and even properties to DwC once we found them to be stable and agreed. I guess all Im saying is with DwC moving forward a lot last year and now being ratified I prefer to give it a rest and adopt it as is and pass the torch on to the ontology development
which has been mostly standing still last year.
Markus
Am Jan 22, 2010 um 3:31 schrieb Steve Baskauf:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">This issue is with reference to
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=69">http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/issues/detail?id=69</a>
I have proposed the creation of a new Darwin Core term, Individual, that
is a class representing individual organisms in their environment (as
opposed to live organisms in collections which would be Occurrences of
type LivingSpecimen). The justification for this new term is given at
the link above, but to summarize, this class is needed:
1. to establish the concept of an individual (in the sense of the object
of dwc:individualID) and its relationship to other classes in the TDWG
ontology.
2. to provide a way for users who assign a GUID as a value for the dwc
term individualID to meet Recommendation 11 (regarding GUID typing) of
the draft TDWG GUID Applicability Statement.
I should also note that the problem that my proposal is intended to
resolve may exist for other terms in the new Darwin Core standard that
can refer to resources that can be identified with GUIDs. In
particular, there may be no existing classes in the TDWG ontology
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://tdwg-ontology.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ontology/voc/">http://tdwg-ontology.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ontology/voc/</a>
for GUID-labeled resources that are referenced by identificationID
datasetID, eventID, and locationID . The lack of an appropriate means
to type objects identified by GUIDs is only one of the impediments to
the implementation of GUIDs in the biodiversity community, but it is one
that can be solved relatively quickly by appropriate action on the part
of the TDWG technical architecture group.
Steve Baskauf
--
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
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu">http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu</a>
_______________________________________________
tdwg-content mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org">tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content">http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
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
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu">http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu</a>
</pre>
</body>
</html>