Dear Trevor, I watched from a far intellectual distance (not being a computer scientist or a taxonomist) as my colleague Bob Morris helped develop the SDD schema. Occasionally Bob and I would discuss the the broader issues of how standards are recieved by a community and how or why they get adopted I know there was a great deal of time and thought put into the proposed standard and that your comments will be very helpful to the committee and to someone like me trying to understand the issues. Your email also highlights the equally important communication and sociological issues with standards. I hope your comments will stimulate a broader dialogue. Rob Stevenson Paterson, Trevor wrote:

Gregor

I have written a rough document considering several aspects of the SDD-schema - largely interpreted with reference to our Prometheus Database model for descriptive data. It seems easier to keep this all together, rather than post it to various sections on twiki, so i am attaching it here

My main problems in interpreting the schema were the lack of documentation ( as always...) especially for the conceptually complex parts like concept trees. I think clear, visual summary models for description, characters, concept trees etc would help a novice to get to grips with the concepts, and might make some of the complexities more tractable. I do worry that the overall schema is over complex and 'trying to do too much in one go' - eg considering multiple language and expertise representations, although I am sure that there are good political reasons for everything.....

yours trevor

Trevor Paterson PhD t.paterson@napier.ac.uk <mailto:t.paterson@napier.ac.uk>

School of Computing Napier University Merchiston Campus 10 Colinton Road Edinburgh Scotland EH10 5DT

tel: +44 (0)131 455-2752

www.dcs.napier.ac.uk/~cs175 <http://www.dcs.napier.ac.uk/%7Ecs175>www.prometheusdb.org <http://www.prometheusdb.org/>

-- R.D. Stevenson Dept. of Biology UMass Boston MA 02125-3393 tel 617-287-6572 fax 617-287-6650 http://www.cs.umb.edu/efg/