<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">A TDWG standard not actually being used, surely not ;)</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">Leaving aside the wisdom of XML schema (yuck) and developing standards independently of actual products, it does puzzle me that the work Roger Hyam did on the LSID vocabularies is consistently overlooked. The is a RDF version of TCS <br><span style="font-family: '.HelveticaNeueUI'; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; "><a href="http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/TaxonConcept">http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/TaxonConcept</a> </span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><span style="font-family: '.HelveticaNeueUI'; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; "><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><span style="font-family: '.HelveticaNeueUI'; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; ">This was used by CoL in their LSIDs, but because they usually broke I suspect nobody used them.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><span style="font-family: '.HelveticaNeueUI'; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; "><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><span style="font-family: '.HelveticaNeueUI'; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; ">We seem to be in a muddled state at present where there are competing vocabularies in use for taxonomic names and concepts, and these two notions are often not cleanly separated. Whereas nomenclators such as IPNI and Zoobank use the LSID taxon name vocabulary, other databases use vocabularies such as Darwin Core, which rather conflate names and concepts. It's not clear to me how this situation arose, but it somewhat defeats the point of having standards.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><span style="font-family: '.HelveticaNeueUI'; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; "><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><span style="font-family: '.HelveticaNeueUI'; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; ">Regards,</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><span style="font-family: '.HelveticaNeueUI'; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; "><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><span style="font-family: '.HelveticaNeueUI'; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; ">Rod</span></div><div><font face=".HelveticaNeueUI"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);"><br></span></font></div><div><font face=".HelveticaNeueUI"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);"><br></span></font></div><div><font face=".HelveticaNeueUI"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);"><br></span></font><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Sent from my iPhone</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br>On 1 Nov 2012, at 22:41, <<a href="mailto:Tony.Rees@csiro.au">Tony.Rees@csiro.au</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><div><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12 (filtered medium)"><style><!--
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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--><div class="WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Hi TDWG persons,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">I am involved in an activity here to set a local standard for storing taxonomic name, identifier and (probably) hierarchy information in metadata records using our profile of ISO 19115 for the latter, and the question will come up as to whether to use elements from TCS, DwC, EML, NCBII extension to ISO 19115, or other. By default I would expect the front runner to be TCS but it appears few if any major systems have ever gone that route – I have looked at ITIS, COL, TROPICOS, WoRMS, IPNI, GBIF, AFD/APNI, more… the nearest would perhaps be AFD/APNI (hence copying Paul on this email) however their “ibis” schema, though apparently based originally on TCS, <a href="http://biodiversity.org.au/xml/ibis-20120909.xsd">http://biodiversity.org.au/xml/ibis-20120909.xsd</a> , does not make any explicit reference to the TCS schema so far as I can see. (Note also the cited schema definition <a href="http://biodiversity.org.au/xml/ibis">http://biodiversity.org.au/xml/ibis</a> [or presumably <a href="http://biodiversity.org.au/xml/ibis.xsd">http://biodiversity.org.au/xml/ibis.xsd</a>] does not seem to exist, but maybe I am missing something).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">I am in the interesting position of also wishing to make apps which both publish and consume taxonomic name information so *<b>could</b>* implement TCS for these, but if no-one else is doing so maybe that is not a path to future data harmonisation, and something like DwC might be better.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">It does seem odd that we have a standard endorsed in 2005 by TDWG which is apparently unused by any current major players in the real world. Any thoughts?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Regards - Tony<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Tony Rees<br>Manager, Divisional Data Centre,<br>CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research,<br>GPO </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><ns0:address><ns0:street><span style="color:#1F497D">Box</span></ns0:street><span style="color:#1F497D"> 1538,</span></ns0:address><span style="color:#1F497D"><br></span><ns0:place><ns0:city><span style="color:#1F497D">Hobart</span></ns0:city><span style="color:#1F497D">, </span><ns0:state><span style="color:#1F497D">Tasmania</span></ns0:state></ns0:place><span style="color:#1F497D"> 7001, </span><ns0:country-region><ns0:place><span style="color:#1F497D">Australia</span></ns0:place></ns0:country-region><span style="color:#1F497D"><br>Ph: 0362 325318 (Int: +61 362 325318)<br>Fax: 0362 325000 (Int: +61 362 325000)</span></span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">e-mail: <a href="mailto:Tony.Rees@csiro.au" title="mailto:Tony.Rees@csiro.au">Tony.Rees@csiro.au</a><br>Manager, OBIS Australia regional node, <a href="http://www.obis.org.au/">http://www.obis.org.au/</a><br>Biodiversity informatics research activities: <a href="http://www.cmar.csiro.au/datacentre/biodiversity.htm">http://www.cmar.csiro.au/datacentre/biodiversity.htm</a><br>Personal info: <a href="http://www.fishbase.org/collaborators/collaboratorsummary.cfm?id=1566" title="http://www.fishbase.org/collaborators/collaboratorsummary.cfm?id=1566">http://www.fishbase.org/collaborators/collaboratorsummary.cfm?id=1566</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">LinkedIn profile: </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tony-rees/18/770/36">http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tony-rees/18/770/36</a><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div style="border:none;border-left:solid blue 1.5pt;padding:0cm 0cm 0cm 4.0pt"><div><div style="border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0cm 0cm 0cm"><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"">From:</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif""> <a href="mailto:tdwg-tag-bounces@lists.tdwg.org">tdwg-tag-bounces@lists.tdwg.org</a> [<a href="mailto:tdwg-tag-bounces@lists.tdwg.org">mailto:tdwg-tag-bounces@lists.tdwg.org</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Paul Murray<br><b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, 7 March 2012 12:52 PM<br><b>To:</b> Steve Baskauf<br><b>Cc:</b> "Éamonn Ó Tuama (GBIF)"; TDWG TAG<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [tdwg-tag] Creating a TDWG standard for documenting Data Standards [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div><p class="MsoNormal">On 07/03/2012, at 3:11 AM, Steve Baskauf wrote:<o:p></o:p></p></div><p class="MsoNormal"><br><br><o:p></o:p></p><div><p class="MsoNormal">Dag and Éamonn,<br><br>In the context of the discussion which has been going on in the TDWG RDF mailing list, I have been thinking more about the issue of how to deal with DwC terms which state "Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary...". That would be dcterms:type, dwc:language, dwc:basisOfRecord, dwc:sex, dwc:lifeStage, dwc:reproductiveCondition, dwc:behavior, dwc:establishmentMeans, dwc:occurrenceStatus, dwc:disposition, dwc:continent, dwc:waterBody, dwc:islandGroup, dwc:island, dwc:country, dwc:verbatimCoordinateSystem, dwc:georeferenceVerificationStatus, dwc:identificationVerificationStatus, dwc:taxonRank; dwc:nomenclaturalCode, dwc:taxonomicStatus, dwc:relationshipOfResource, and dwc:measurementType .<o:p></o:p></p></div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">We here have had all sorts of problems using other people's vocabularies - they never quite match the data we have. Our solution has been to use the standard terms where possible, but to mint our own where needed. We create RDF objects and to declare them as being the correct type.<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">For instance, <o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:#3834FF"><a href="http://biodiversity.org.au/voc/afd/AFD">http://biodiversity.org.au/voc/afd/AFD</a>#RelationshipTypeTerm</span></span><o:p></o:p></p></div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Is declared to be a subclass of<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:#4DAC72"><a href="http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/TaxonConcept">http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/TaxonConcept#</a></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:#3834FF">TaxonRelationshipTerm</span></span><o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">And we have a few specific items of that type:<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:black"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:#3834FF"><a href="http://biodiversity.org.au/voc/afd/RelationshipTypeTerm">http://biodiversity.org.au/voc/afd/RelationshipTypeTerm</a>#has-emendation</span></span><o:p></o:p></p></div><div><div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:black"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:#3834FF"><a href="http://biodiversity.org.au/voc/afd/RelationshipTypeTerm">http://biodiversity.org.au/voc/afd/RelationshipTypeTerm</a></span></span><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:#3834FF">#has-invalid-name</span><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:#4E9192"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:black"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:#3834FF"><a href="http://biodiversity.org.au/voc/afd/RelationshipTypeTerm">http://biodiversity.org.au/voc/afd/RelationshipTypeTerm</a></span></span><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:#3834FF">#has-junior-homonym</span><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:#4E9192"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:black"> </span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:#3834FF"><a href="http://biodiversity.org.au/voc/afd/RelationshipTypeTerm">http://biodiversity.org.au/voc/afd/RelationshipTypeTerm</a></span></span><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:#3834FF">#has-miscellaneous-literature-name</span><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:#4E9192"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">These individuals are therefore correctly typed to be legitimately be used as a TDWG </span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Monaco","serif";color:#3834FF">relationshipCategory</span></span><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">. <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">Your lists of dwc:disposition values does not need to be exhaustive. It's legitimate (from a machine point of view) for a site to create their own terms. However, this does mean that the world becomes fragmented into a number of site-specific vocabularies that cannot be machine-reasoned over. The underlying reason for this is that that is in fact the way the world actually is at the moment, and there's not a lot of help for it.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif"">-------------------------------------------------------------<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">There are two or three approaches to using a standard vocabulary when your own data does not quite match it.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">You can use the standard term that is *closest in meaning* to your own term. The difficulty here is that if the meaning of the standard term implies things that are not true of your data, using it means that you are asserting things that are in fact not true, and for that reason I suggest that it's not the way to go.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">You can use the standard term whose definition encompasses your term. The difficulty here is that some vocabularies (notably Taxon Concept Schema) don't have "other" or "unspecified" values for their enumerations - they are not exhaustive.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">In either of these cases, you will want to supplement the standard term with another value specific to your own data set, whose definition you make available. There are a few ways to do that.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">You can use the "define your own term" mechanism and assert both<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"> _:_ tdwg:has_relationship_type tdwg:is-subtaxon-of .<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"> _:_ tdwg:has_relationship_type my-voc:is-recently-declared-subtaxon-of .<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">You can have a completely separate predicate:<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"> _:_ tdwg:has_relationship_type tdwg:is-subtaxon-of .<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"> _:_ myvoc:has_relationship_type my-voc:is-recently-declared-subtaxon-of .<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">You can also be terribly clever and declare your own predicate to be a super-property of the TDWG predicate, one whose range is a union. This isn't terribly useful to people using your data unless the tdwg triple is also asserted.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">Another alternative is to create an OWL rule that says <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">"if a thing has relationship-type my-voc:is-recently-declared-subtaxon-of, then it also has relationship-type tdwg:is-subtaxon-of"<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">But this creates a performance hit.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">-------------------------------------------------------------<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">That little discussion aside, my main concern is that you don't get mired in attempting to exhaustively list all the different island types (etc) as part of the vocabulary that you are creating. It's a never-ending job. It might be an idea to have the design guideline that no enumeration class defined by the vocabulary shall have more than 10 values. It's arbitrary, but it will keep people from being carried away subdividing types into a hierarchy that they think is a good idea, but which doesn't match the data people already have.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">I'd also suggest that that every enumeration (ie, ist of individuals) include two special values:<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">NOT_SPECIFIED. This value is not present in the source, underlying data. It isn't in the database, the respondent didn't fill out the form fully. Perhaps "NULL" might be a better name - assuming people at this level know what it means.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">OTHER. This means the value is some specific value, but it's not covered in the TDWG list. I am not sure if this value should be explicitly used if you are publishing your own vocabulary and using terms from that. I'm inclined to say it should not be, because doing that would result in two values for predicates that naturally should be functional.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black">These special values *can* be done as a single instance, which means you could easily pull all "not specifieds" out of a dataset, but that means that either the ranges would have to be declared as a union, which is messy, or the individuals would have to be declared as having all possible types, which would break disjoint class declarations.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></div></div></div></div><p>If you have received this transmission in error please notify us immediately by return e-mail and delete all copies. 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