[Tdwg-guid] Which TCS/RDF?

Roderic Page r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
Thu Sep 28 18:05:25 CEST 2006


Pardon my evangelical outburst. The standard itself  
(http://www.omg.org/docs/dtc/04-05-01.pdf) says little about formats,  
e.g. p. 19

"The Metadata_document is (usually) a string containing the metadata  
itself. It is considered out of the scope of this specification to  
restrict the number of formats that the metadata can be returned in.  
The most popular and expected formats are, however, RDF and XMI(sic)."

As a consumer, I prefer RDF because I want to aggregate information  
from different sources, and RDF + triple stores + SPARQL make this  
easy. Existing rich LSID clients (such as LSID LaunchPad) assume  
RDF/XML. Plus, RDF encourages the use of GUIDs (URIs) to explicitly  
identify resources, and there's a lot of interest from other  
communities in this topic (e.g., the Semantic Web), which means we get  
a lot of technology for free. For all these reasons, and consistent  
with the KISS principle, I think RDF/XML is the obvious candidate, and  
is indeed the only one being used to date in the LSID providers that  
are actually up and running.

Rod

On 28 Sep 2006, at 16:34, Döring, Markus wrote:

> Rod,
> I am not saying a service should provide different formats. I was  
> simply curious to know what the LSID specs suggest. I couldn't recall  
> a discussion on what format would be most useful for clients.
>
> Markus
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: tdwg-guid-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu  
> [mailto:tdwg-guid-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Roderic  
> Page
> Sent: Donnerstag, 28. September 2006 15:50
> To: Döring, Markus
> Cc: tdwg-guid at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Tdwg-guid] Which TCS/RDF?
>
>
> I'm, struggling a little to see why this is an issue. Surely a provider
> would aim to serve the format that is most use to consumers -- in which
> case, RDF/XML seems the obvious choice to me, given the availability of
> tools for handling XML (including web browsers).
>
> Translating RDF/XML into alternative formats would simply require a XSL
> style sheet. For example, I use XSL to transform RDF into colour-coded
> XML, and HTML in my LSID tester. It should be trivial to convert
> RDF/XML into N-triple, for example. If consumers need N-triples, they
> can do the translation at their end. There are examples of this here
> http://www.semanticplanet.com/library/Main/RdfToTriplesStylesheet and
> here http://www.w3.org/2001/12/rubyrdf/xsltrdf/README.html.
>
> Why not keep things simple? Providers serve the most generally useful
> format, and consumers massage that if necessary.
>
> Regards
>
> Rod
>
>
> On 28 Sep 2006, at 11:49, Döring, Markus wrote:
>
>> Roger,
>> I was rather thinking about different ways of serializing RDF. RDF/XML
>> is just one way of expressing RDF and I would like to know if LSIDs
>> (or TDWG) specifies that RDF/XML should be used. If a service is free
>> to pick, a RDF framework, in contrast to templates, could probably
>> easily return different formats for the same RDF graph.
>>  
>> Markus
>>  
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: rogerhyam at googlemail.com [mailto:rogerhyam at googlemail.com] On
>>> Behalf Of Roger Hyam
>>> Sent: Donnerstag, 28. September 2006 11:53
>>> To: Döring, Markus
>>> Cc: Steve Perry; peter.hollas at thomson.com;
>>> tdwg-guid at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>>> Subject: Re: [Tdwg-guid] Which TCS/RDF?
>>>
>>> Hi Markus,
>>>
>>> The LSID spec suggests that RDF is the default return type but you
>>> can request different formats. We would just need to agree on names
>>> for the formats.
>>>
>>> Thinking from a clients point of view consistency is the most
>>> important thing I guess especially if the data is going to be mixed
>>> with data from other sources. It would be far easier to write a
>>> client to handle just RDF than to handle RDF plus arbitrary other
>>> formats  - perhaps with a plug in infrastructure etc etc.
>>>
>>> All the best,
>>>
>>> Roger
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9/28/06, "Döring, Markus" <m.doering at bgbm.org> wrote: Hi,
>>>> I was wondering if the LSID specs require you to return RDF/XML.
>>>> Could a service also return (or even request?) Turtle, N-Triple,
>>>> RDFa or whatever comes next year?
>>>>
>>>> It would be costly to switch formats using a templating system, so I
>>>> am just curious.
>>>>
>>>> Markus
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: tdwg-guid-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>>>> [mailto:tdwg-guid-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Steve
>>>> Perry
>>>> Sent: Dienstag, 26. September 2006 18:12
>>>> To: peter.hollas at thomson.com
>>>> Cc: tdwg-guid at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>>>> Subject: Re: [Tdwg-guid] Which TCS/RDF?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi Peter,
>>>>
>>>> I was just writing a response to your question about Jena, but I'll
>>>> scrap it now.  Unfortunately there's no standard representation for
>>>> TCS
>>>> in RDF at this time.  Hopefully there will be one in the near  
>>>> future.
>>>>
>>>> Jena is well suited to consuming RDF metadata, but I agree with you
>>>> that
>>>> it's a bit heavyweight if all you want to do is produce many
>>>> instances
>>>> of a single class.
>>>>
>>>> Visualizing the problem as one of templating and using Spring MVC is
>>>> a
>>>> neat approach.  I use Spring mostly for dependency injection and
>>>> hadn't
>>>> considered that it might be used to isolate this kind of software
>>>> from
>>>> changes in the schema.
>>>>
>>>> -Steve
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> peter.hollas at thomson.com wrote:
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>> Could someone advise on which TCS/RDF ontology would be the best
>>>>> to implement for metadata coming from nomenclatural sources such
>>>>> as ZooBank? I've yet to come across anything other than a TCS XML
>>>> Schema
>>>>> in public circulation.
>>>>>
>>>>> I've decided to do away with using the Jena API altogether for
>>>>> returning metadata responses from ZooBank; it seems to be rather
>>>> heavy
>>>>> handed approach to returning what is basically a simple structured
>>>>> text document. A much more flexible way to go is with a page
>>>>> templating system, especially when the schemata are in constant
>>>> flux.
>>>>> A Spring Framework MVC/JSTL endpoint will allow for schemata
>>>> changes
>>>>> to be implemented without recompilation. The LSID metadata class
>>>> will
>>>>> just act as a façade/decorator to the templating system.
>>>>>
>>>>> Many thanks, Peter.
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> TDWG-GUID mailing list
>>>>> TDWG-GUID at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>>>>> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-guid
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> -------------------------------------
>>> Roger Hyam
>>> Technical Architect
>>> Taxonomic Databases Working Group
>>> -------------------------------------
>>> http://www.tdwg.org
>>> roger at tdwg.org
>>> +44 1578 722782
>>> -------------------------------------
>>>
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>>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> -
> ----------------------------------------
> Professor Roderic D. M. Page
> Editor, Systematic Biology
> DEEB, IBLS
> Graham Kerr Building
> University of Glasgow
> Glasgow G12 8QP
> United Kingdom
>
> Phone:    +44 141 330 4778
> Fax:      +44 141 330 2792
> email:    r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
> web:      http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
> iChat:    aim://rodpage1962
> reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html
>
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> names: http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/portal/
> Find out what we know about a species: http://ispecies.org Rod's rants  
> on phyloinformatics: http://iphylo.blogspot.com Rod's rants on ants:  
> http://semant.blogspot.com
>
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------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
----------------------------------------
Professor Roderic D. M. Page
Editor, Systematic Biology
DEEB, IBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QP
United Kingdom

Phone:    +44 141 330 4778
Fax:      +44 141 330 2792
email:    r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
web:      http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
iChat:    aim://rodpage1962
reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html

Subscribe to Systematic Biology through the Society of Systematic
Biologists Website:  http://systematicbiology.org
Search for taxon names: http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/portal/
Find out what we know about a species: http://ispecies.org
Rod's rants on phyloinformatics: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
Rod's rants on ants: http://semant.blogspot.com





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