I can't help but feel we are getting into a much more complicated area of biodiversity ( or any observation oriented field for that matter ) and that there must be other ontologies or models that we could follow or reuse. Our strength at TDWG is obviously the more biodiversity specific details such as taxonomy, invasiveness, etc. I might have an investigation of possible models to reuse - unless someone has already done this and has a suggestion.
Kevin
Sent from my HTC
----- Reply message ----- From: "Richard Pyle" deepreef@bishopmuseum.org Date: Thu, Oct 21, 2010 8:11 pm Subject: [tdwg-content] practical details of recording a determination What is an Occurrence? To: "'Steve Baskauf'" steve.baskauf@vanderbilt.edu Cc: "tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org" tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org
I see dwc:establishmentMeans as being very clearly a property of "Individual At Place" (again, scoping "Individual" up to at least population). The closest thing we have to that in the diagram1 is Occurrence. The only hitch is that Occurrence isn't exactly "Individual At Place", so much as "Individual At Event[=Place+Time]" Some people have suggected that dwc:establishmentMeans is a function of Time as well as Place, in which case it is very clearly (to me) a property of Occurrence.
Rich
________________________________
From: Steve Baskauf [mailto:steve.baskauf@vanderbilt.edu] Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 3:25 PM To: Richard Pyle Cc: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] practical details of recording a determination What is an Occurrence?
Well, I also feel pretty good about most of that diagram, but I'm still struggling with the whole "token" thing. I feel the need to discuss basisOfRecord=LivingSpecimen which is the most complicated case and is also related to the previous discussion about dwc:establishmentMeans as well as my proposal to move it to the proposed Individual class. It is also related to another issue that I haven't broached here but which is discussed in my paper - "Occurrences" that aren't directly derived from an individual. I'm beginning to think that part of what I wrote there (in the paper) was wrong, but I'm not sure what the alternative is. That issue will probably come up if I comment about what Cam wrote in his email. So there may be more to hash out, but I can't handle it today because I've got too many other things to do. I've been mentally composing what I hope is a lucid presentation, but it hasn't hit the keyboard yet.
Steve
I have to say, this has been about the most productive (if volumunous) list-discussion I've had in...well...maybe ever. It seems we've both been equally persuasive, and equally willing to concede. How rare that happens in an internet forum! I'm not sure there's anything left that we disagee about. If the "diagram1" seems to resonate with everyone as the most "normalized" ER diagram we'll likely ever need, and if we can somehow accommodate flexibility in RDF for collapsing attributes to different classes (but only from the "one" side to the "many" side) -- then we might have achived the elusive Holy Grail of biodiversity informatics: true consensus.
Thanks for your great feedback and for challenging my statements. I need
that!
Likewise!
Aloha, Rich
.
-- Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
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