Hi Gregor,
Sorry to remain confusing (it's all so clear to me ;-) ).
I think what you are trying to do is relate records by features they have in common, features that one might find in gazetteers of named places. That's not what the locationID is for.
locationID is the identifier for the Location. The Location consists of all of those fields having to do with place. If two Locations differ in any of the content of any of the fields in Location, they should have different locationIDs. This is consistent with the use of class identifiers throughout the rest of the Darwin Core.
So, you said, "I assume that the locality is known in detail, e.g. "E of little pond 100 S of village X". Can the localityID for village X be given or not?" The answer is "No, the locationID for village X can exist, but it shouldn't be the locationID of the record referring to the detailed place that mentions village X."
I hope that's clearer.
John
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 2:41 PM, Gregor Hagedorng.m.hagedorn@gmail.com wrote:
But I think you misunderstood me. The localityID can apply to any level of granularity, but it should always be the id for the whole of the Location, not some arbitrary part of it, such as the stateProvince in one case and country in another.
In other words, if a country, stateProvince, and county were given with a localityID, that localityID should apply to the combination of the three (in other words, the county, within that stateProvince within that country). If a locality were also given, then the id shoould be for that locality within that county within that stateProvince within that country. The id could even apply to individual georeferences within named places.
Thanks John, but sorry, I still don't understand. I assume that the locality is known in detail, e.g. "E of little pond 100 S of village X". Can the localityID for village X be given or not? I thought your counterexample would preclude that. You say "the whole content of the Location part of the record, not just one part of it". Is the village Gazetteer ID a "part" in that sense or not? Or, shall the location details (sublocation) be given elsewhere?
Gregor