Thanks for the references, John. Sorry for bringing up a settled issue - I didn't mean to plow old ground again (I think I wasn't on the list yet when these posts came out). I can see the advantage of not actually specifying a domain for the DwC terms in terms of not squelching innovative uses of the DwC terms. However, rdfs:domain issue aside, if I'm understanding the cited archived messages correctly, the point of putting the DwC terms into classes at all is to help to clarify what they mean and how they should be used. The point of my post was that the dwc:xxxxID terms have two possible uses, one of which is consistent with their current placement in classes and one (the one that I think is most useful) that is not.
I guess the reason that I'm bringing this up is that I'm using these terms pretty heavily in a way that I'm not sure is the way they are intended. What I would like is either some confirmation from the community that this use is OK or else we need to define some other terms that will get the job done. Darwin Core doesn't at this point have an "instruction book" except for the Google Code Wiki and that Wiki has no descriptions yet for most of the terms in the vocabulary. I don't feel comfortable creating my own meanings for terms that don't have clear guidelines. After all, the point of having Darwin Core terms is so that people use them to refer to the same "thing".
I would also like to make two suggestions about the RDF file at http://darwincore.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/rdf/dwcterms.rdf . One is that either someone needs to fix the "human.xsl" file so that it renders the RDF in a web browser, or remove the xml-stylesheet tag and just let web browsers display the raw RDF XML. This has not rendered properly since the rdf was moved over from the tdwg domain (I think at least six months ago). It doesn't matter to me since I know how to use "view source" to see the source XML, but it's really pretty shoddy form for the definition of a major vocabulary. The second thing is that if the DwC terms are not going to have rdfs:domains specified, then somebody should take those erroneous comments out of the dwcterms.rdf file. I think that would be allowable without requiring the issuing of a new version because it's correcting an error and doesn't actually change the DwC standard itself.
Steve
John Wieczorek wrote:
For background on the state of and reasons for the Darwin Core domains, here are relevant messages in the tdwg-content list archives from the public review period for the standard as it currently stands:
assertions in DwC terms:
http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2009-June/000019.html http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2009-June/000021.html http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2009-June/000022.html http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2009-June/000024.html
Request for Decision for Public Review of DarwinCore Draft Standard:
http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2009-July/000035.html
http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2009-August/000088.html http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2009-August/000089.html http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2009-August/000098.html http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2009-August/000092.html
On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Steve Baskauf <steve.baskauf@vanderbilt.edu mailto:steve.baskauf@vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
Markus, Thanks! After I posted the other night I was thinking that the way I had constructed the RDF was a bit convoluted. Your example is much more straightforward. (although except for a lack of typing on my part the two examples actually result in the same triples). As you noted, the other thing that my example has is that the record for the offspring makes reference to the dwc:resourceRelationshipID as a way to assert that the offspring has that relationship. I would be interested in some discussion about the appropriate use of the varous dwc:xxxxID terms (e.g. dwc:occurrenceID, dwc:institutionID, etc.). As was the case with the resourceRelationship terms, there aren't a lot of examples showing the proper use of these terms, with the noteworthy exception of http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/guides/xml/index.htm . As I see it, there are two possible uses of these terms. One (the "first" use) is to identify the actual resource that is the subject of a record. The other (the "second" use) is as an "IDRef" term that connects the subject resource to another record of a different type. In the XML example, we see both uses. In the first example in section 2.7 we see <dcterms:Location> <dwc:locationID>http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127</dwc:locationID> ... more metadata... </dcterms:Location> <dwc:Occurrence> ... more metadata ... <dwc:occurrenceID>urn:catalog:MVZ:Mammals:14523</dwc:occurrenceID> ... more metadata ... <dwc:locationID>http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127</dwc:locationID> </dwc:Occurrence> where in the dcterms:Location record, dwc:locationID indicates the identifier for the Location itself (i.e. the subject), while in the dwc:Occurrence record, dwc:locationID refers to the object of the location property of the Occurrence. Because of the freewheeling nature of generic XML files, I guess this is OK. However, when I'm trying to think clearly about how to express relationships in RDF, I've come to decide that I don't like this dual use. I would express the above relationships in RDF as follows: <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127" <http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127>> <rdfs:type rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/terms/Location" <http://purl.org/dc/terms/Location>/> ...metadata... </rdf:Description> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://resolver.org/urn:catalog:MVZ:Mammals:14523" <http://resolver.org/urn:catalog:MVZ:Mammals:14523>> <rdfs:type rdf:resource="http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/Occurrence" <http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/Occurrence>/> ... metadata... <dwc:locationID rdf:resource="http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127" <http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127>/> </rdf:Description> To me this makes the most sense. It corresponds to the "second" use in the XML example (it indicates the Location property of the Occurrence, i.e. serves as the predicate connecting the subject Occurrence to the object Location). One could also do something like <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127" <http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127>> <dwc:locationID rdf:resource="http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127" <http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127>/> <rdfs:type rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/terms/Location" <http://purl.org/dc/terms/Location>/> ...metadata... etc. or <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127" <http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127>> <dwc:locationID>http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127</dwc:locationID> <rdfs:type rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/terms/Location" <http://purl.org/dc/terms/Location>/> ...metadata... etc. But this seems rather pointless because in the first case, the rdf:about attribute already provides information about the subject of the relationship in a Linked Data manner. In the second case, why have a special term to indicate a literal version of the identifier when there is a more generic and well-known term that is common use? e.g. <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127" <http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127>> <dcterms:identifier>http://guid.mvz.org/sites/arg/127</dcterms:identifier> <rdfs:type rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/terms/Location" <http://purl.org/dc/terms/Location>/> ...metadata... etc. In contrast, there is no simple alternative that I can see (with the possible exception of the dwc:relatedResource, which I wouldn't call a SIMPLE alternative) to using dwc:locationID as the predicate that points to the Location object of an Occurrence subject. Darwin Core doesn't have any terms specifically designed for this (such as "hasLocation" or "hasIdentificatin" for example) but I don't see any reason why the dwc:xxxxID terms couldn't be used this way. The main issue I can see with the use of these dwc:xxxxID terms is their placement in classes which I guess is related to their rdfs:domain . Although the term description comments at http://darwincore.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/rdf/dwcterms.rdf (is this the actual place where DwC is officially defined?) say that each term has a rdfs:domain property, they actually don't in the RDF. So the only real clue to the intended subjects of the dwc:xxxxID terms is the placement of the dwc:xxxxID terms into classes. In most cases, a dwc:xxxxID term is placed in the class of the thing that the term is identifying (e.g. occurrenceID is in the Occurrence class, identificationID is in the Identification class, etc.). This would hint that the terms were intended to be used with instances of their class as their subject. However, if the terms were used as IDRefs (the "second" use shown in the XML example) then they really should be in different classes. For example, dwc:locationID could be a member of the class Occurrence, since an Occurrence could have dwc:locationID as a property with an instance of a Location as its object. But then there might be the question of whether an Event could also have a dwc:locationID as a property and dwc:locationID shouldn't be in two classes. In the absence of defined rdfs:domains, I guess the terms can be used with pretty much any subject a user thinks makes sense. As Bob Morris pointed out in a recent post, there aren't very many applications that are doing much in the way of semantic reasoning at this point. But I suppose (hope?) that there could be some in the future, so achieving some kind of consensus on how the terms should be used in RDF would probably be good. At this point, the dwc:xxxxID terms serve a useful purpose for me in connecting one kind of resource to another (examples in http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/ind-baskauf/41870.rdf and http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/baskauf/51363.rdf), so unless somebody tells me that's "wrong" and comes up with a better term to describe the relationships I need to describe, I'll keep using the dwc:xxxxID terms as IDRefs. Comments? Steve Markus Döring wrote:I must say it feels strange to use the id terms in rdf to refer to rdf:resources instead of holding ID literals. More natural to the rdf language would be <dwc:resource rdf:resource="..." /> and <dwc:relatedResource rdf:resource="..." /> I suppose, but the dwc vocabulary was built for different technologies, not rdf alone. So I guess thats the price we have to pay. Markus-- Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences postal mail address: VU Station B 351634 Nashville, TN 37235-1634, U.S.A. delivery address: 2125 Stevenson Center 1161 21st Ave., S. Nashville, TN 37235 office: 2128 Stevenson Center phone: (615) 343-4582, fax: (615) 343-6707 http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu