Paul,
That's exciting that you are trying to generate RDF using real data!
I think we initially considered including something in the guide like
what you have suggested, but the problem is that what constitutes "an
Occurrence record" varies depending on the model one has in mind when
serializing the record as RDF. Historically, "occurrences" were
considered to be a superclass that included specimens, and any property
remotely related to a specimen could be included as part of an
occurrence record. A provider exposing an occurrence record might give
it properties such as dwc:eventDate, dwc:preparations, and
dwc:locality. However, a different provider might consider
dwc:eventDate to be the property of a dwc:Event instance,
dwc:preparations to be the property of a dwc:PreservedSpecimen, and
dwc:locality to be the property of a dcterms:Location instance and link
those instances to a separate Occurrence instance via object properties.
Which of these is correct? At this point there is no consensus as to
whether one of these approaches is better than the other. We avoided
putting extensive examples within the guide document itself, since the
guide will become part of the standard and will probably not be changed
frequently, whereas best practices for deciding the types of resources
with which properties should be associated is likely to develop over
time and with the experience of usage. For that reason, we have
included examples in the ancillary documents that are associated with
the guide, but which do not form part of the standard. The "examples
using 'pure' Darwin Core" [1] and "Examples using Darwin-SW object
properties" [2] illustrate the extremes that I've described above.
Steve
[1] https://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/DwcRdfOccurrences
[2] https://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/DwcRdfExamplesDarwinSW
Paul J. Morris wrote:
As I've been working through implementing RDF generation in a few
applications and seeking to conform to the guide, I've found myself
spending a good bit of time hunting through the document looking for
guidance on particular situations, this leads me to a suggestion for
the guide: Include, at the end of the guide, a single comprehensive
example of an Occurrence record, annotated to point to relevant
sections in the guide. This could serve both to quickly answer
questions and as a visual index to the rest of the guide.
-Paul
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Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
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