Can somebody give a "live" example where this has actually been used (i.e. a URI pointing to some RDF or an XML record)?

A "made-up" example based on Ms. Julie Woodruff's relationship given in the DwC Quick Reference guide: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm :
subject organism (the offspring) URI: http://example.org/individual/67488
object organism (the mother) URI: http://example.org/individual/23327

If there were a term like voc:mother that said that the object was the mother of the subject, it would be easy to express:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:voc="http://example.org/terms/"
>
    <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.org/individual/67488">
        <voc:mother rdf:resource="http://example.org/individual/23327" />
    </rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>

Throw that into an RDF validator like http://www.w3.org/RDF/Validator/ and you get a graph that expresses the relationship simply. Now I struggled to express the relationship using terms from the Darwin Core ResourceRelationship class:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:dwc="http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/"
>
<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.org/individual/67488">
    <dwc:resourceRelationshipID>
        <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.org/individual/67488#mother">
          <dwc:resourceID rdf:resource="http://example.org/individual/67488" />
          <dwc:relatedResourceID rdf:resource="http://example.org/individual/23327" />
          <dwc:relationshipOfResource>mother of</dwc:relationshipOfResource>
          <dwc:relationshipAccordingTo rdf:resource="http://example.org/people/woodruff-julie" />
          <dwc:relationshipEstablishedDate>2003-08-17</dwc:relationshipEstablishedDate>
          <dwc:relationshipRemarks>mother and offspring collected from the same nest</dwc:relationshipRemarks>
        </rdf:Description>
    </dwc:resourceRelationshipID>
</rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>

When I throw that into the validator, I get a graph something like what I imagine, where the URI that I made up for the instance of the relationship (http://example.org/individual/67488#mother) is a named node that connects the subject to the object and all of the properties of the relationship. But I'm not really sure that this is saying what is intended in the DwC standard. Maybe these ResourceRelationship terms are only intended for database tables where the terms are column headings and the instances are rows, and not really for RDF. But the presence of all of the "ID" terms was suggesting to me the use of URIs/GUIDs. Basically I don't understand how this is supposed to work and a functioning example would be helpful.

Steve Baskauf

John Wieczorek wrote:

The term relationshipOfResource has the recommendation to use a controlled vocabulary. The vocabulary does not yet exist - it is an aspect that requires community development. The ResourceRelationship class has the added benefits over the associatedOccurrences term that there is no dependence on the syntax of the content to discern the correct meaning.

From http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#relationshipOfResource:

Definition: The relationship of the resource identified by relatedResourceID to the subject (optionally identified by the resourceID). Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary.

Comment: Examples: "duplicate of", "mother of", "endoparasite of", "host to", "sibling of", "valid synonym of", "located within". For discussion see http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/wiki/ResourceRelationship

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 7:07 AM, Mark Wilden <mark@mwilden.com> wrote:

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 6:24 AM, John Wieczorek <tuco@berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Note that associatedOccurrences is one of the several terms that are meant
> to allow lists of relationships between resources to be captured in a single
> field. Others include associatedMedia, associatedReferences,
> associatedSequnces, and associatedTaxa. The main purposes of these fields is
> to provide a mechanism to share relationship information in a flat
> application profile such as the Simple Darwin Core
> (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/simple/index.htm). If an application profile
> isn't constrained by being flat, then there is a much more robust way to
> capture relationships, using the ResourceRelationship class and it's
> constituent terms (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#relindex).

However, the values of the description of the relationship
(http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#relationshipOfResource) are
not controlled, so this still doesn't provide a "community-defined"
vocabulary that Bob was asking about.

///ark
Web Applications Developer
Center for Applied Biodiversity Informatics
California Academy of Sciences

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Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences

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