[Tdwg-guid] Jena examples?

Sally Hinchcliffe S.Hinchcliffe at kew.org
Thu Sep 28 09:38:16 CEST 2006 

OK - have joined. Whoopee, more email ...


> 
> I suggest we move the discussion to the TAG list as it is wider than LSIDs.
> 
> Please join the TAG list Sally - we would appreciate your thoughts
> 
> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag
> 
> I have set up a wiki page here:
> 
> http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/TAG/EstablishingLsidVocabularies
> 
> where I am brain storming the issues. Everyone is invited to add 
> ideas/issues to this page.
> 
> I would like to just take a series of decisions so that we have a 
> solution to these issues as soon as possible but I am aware that we must 
> move forward as a group. This is slower but has to be done.
> 
> The situation with TCS/RDF isn't as bad as it might seem. Rob Gales 
> version is based very heavily on the RDFS version that I did earlier in 
> the year for GUID-2 (which IPNI and IF use) so provided Steve keeps his 
> version buried we really only have two versions in the wild and they are 
> really two ports of the same thing.
> 
> If I could have answers to two questions I could probably get the 
> TCS/RDF vocabularies set up in the right place pretty damn quickly.
>    * How do we divide the namespace? - I suggested an approach earlier.
>    * What language do we use for the RDF vocabularies in metadata 
> responses? RDFS/OWL
> 
> I have run out of time here today so I will not have a chance to add 
> anything more to the wiki but will look out the RDFS and OWL versions of 
> TCS Names part tomorrow and try and provide a commentary on any differences.
> 
> More later,
> 
> Roger
> 
> 
> 
> Sally Hinchcliffe wrote:
> > Hi Steve/all
> >
> > I agree that we should start trying to nail down the TCS/RDF more 
> > firmly. I know that Roger wants to discuss this at TDWG but I think 
> > some firm proposals are needed to take to the meeting - and some 
> > robust examples as well, for those of us who struggle with RDFS, OWL 
> > et al and need to see actual implementations to properly engage with 
> > the proposals. Otherwise, as you say, we will end up with some de 
> > facto standards based on LSID implementations which were never 
> > intended to be anything more than proof of concepts.
> >
> > Now is a good time to tackle this for us, because we're re-opening 
> > the LSID implementation that we did for IPNI and trying to bring it 
> > up to something that will be properly releasable and can be more 
> > widely publicised. As part of that work it will be easy to make any 
> > changes to the metadata that's produced. Once released, pressures of 
> > time and other projects will make it hard to re-open the work and 
> > change the metadata output.
> >
> > Is TAG the best place to discuss this? I'm not on that mailing list 
> > but I can probably join if the discussion is going to be over there. 
> >
> > Let me know
> >
> > Sally
> >
> >   
> >> Hi Sally,
> >>
> >> No problem.  The task was to create a prototype LSID resolver, not to 
> >> solve all the KR issues surrounding taxon concepts.  However, I do think 
> >> it's time we start talking about these issues.  I worry that the 
> >> prototype resolvers we set up will become de facto reference 
> >> implementations, that other people will start to construct services 
> >> modeled on the prototypes without us ever having gone back to talk about 
> >> what worked and what didn't.
> >>
> >> I know there are several versions of TCS-in-RDF floating around.  I 
> >> think Roger's is an RDFS document.  Rob Gales created an OWL-DL version 
> >> for the GBIF demonstration project that Jessie and he worked on this 
> >> summer.  Early this year I created a partial implementation in OWL-Lite 
> >> (that I've since discarded).  While each one is "TCS", they're all 
> >> substantially different in the way they represent TCS classes and 
> >> properties, in part because the different representation languages 
> >> (RDFS, OWL-Lite, OWL-DL) have different language features and expressive 
> >> powers.
> >>
> >> It would be nice if we could devise one standard RDF implementation of 
> >> TCS.  I don't care which one we use, but I would like to narrow the 
> >> field to one so we can get the details sorted out.  I'm talking about 
> >> details like resolvable namespaces, typed versus non-typed literals, the 
> >> use of anonymous resources, and serialization issues like the 
> >> references-to-resources problem that cropped up in the IPNI example 
> >> Peter Hollas is working from.  These details are quite important because 
> >> certain decisions taken here can effect the larger network of linked 
> >> data providers. 
> >>
> >> Take the anonymous resources issues:  If you look at the example Peter 
> >> cites, the typifiedBy property refers to an anonymous NomenclaturalType 
> >> that has a dc:title.  Within a single data provider, this is no big deal 
> >> because many different data objects can refer to this 
> >> NomenclaturalType.  However the use of anonymous resources can cause big 
> >> problems when you try to harvest and index the data from multiple 
> >> providers.  It also causes problems for the caching use case.
> >>
> >> It would be nice to discuss some of these things, perhaps within TAG.
> >>
> >> -Steve
> >>
> >>
> >> Sally Hinchcliffe wrote:
> >>     
> >>> Hi Steve /all
> >>>
> >>> We took that syntax straight from Roger's RDF/TCS examples. I think 
> >>> Roger was going to do more work on tidying up those sorts of loose 
> >>> ends. I have to admit that my knowledge of RDF and particularly RDFS 
> >>> is pretty superficial
> >>>
> >>> We can switch to either the shorter format or the safer fully 
> >>> qualified URI - what do people think would be better?
> >>>
> >>> Sally
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>   
> >>>       
> >>>> By the way, the IPNI example you cite has an error:
> >>>>
> >>>> <tn:nomenclaturalCode rdf:resource="&tn;#botanical" />
> >>>>
> >>>> Many RDF/XML parsers will see &tn; as an entity which cannot be 
> >>>> resolved.  Since I don't have a copy of the ontology (and 
> >>>> http://tdwg.org/2006/03/12/TaxonNames does not resolve), I can only take 
> >>>> a guess that it should look something like:
> >>>>
> >>>> <tn:nomenclaturalCode rdf:resource="tn:botanical" />
> >>>>
> >>>> However, using XML namespace prefixes in resource references inside 
> >>>> RDF/XML documents tends to cause problems because not all RDF/XML 
> >>>> parsers are smart enough to dereference the namespace prefix and build a 
> >>>> fully-qualified resource URI.  A safer form of the above would be the 
> >>>> fully qualified resource URI which looks like:
> >>>>
> >>>> <tn:nomenclaturalCode rdf:resource="http://tdwg.org/2006/03/12/TaxonNames/botanical" />
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> -Steve
> >>>>
> >>>>     
> >>>>         
> >>> *** Sally Hinchcliffe
> >>> *** Computer section, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
> >>> *** tel: +44 (0)20 8332 5708
> >>> *** S.Hinchcliffe at rbgkew.org.uk
> >>>
> >>>   
> >>>       
> >
> > *** Sally Hinchcliffe
> > *** Computer section, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
> > *** tel: +44 (0)20 8332 5708
> > *** S.Hinchcliffe at rbgkew.org.uk
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > TDWG-GUID mailing list
> > TDWG-GUID at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> > http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-guid
> >
> >   
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> -------------------------------------
>  Roger Hyam
>  Technical Architect
>  Taxonomic Databases Working Group
> -------------------------------------
>  http://www.tdwg.org
>  roger at tdwg.org
>  +44 1578 722782
> -------------------------------------
> 
> 

*** Sally Hinchcliffe
*** Computer section, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
*** tel: +44 (0)20 8332 5708
*** S.Hinchcliffe at rbgkew.org.uk

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