Another difficulty is that the community already has a system for handing out unique identifiers and extensive systems for managing them - these identifiers are scientific names, and the systems are the various nomenclatural committees. Isn't it absurd to coin unique, stable identifiers when "Ixodes tasmani" is such an identifier already? Isn't that good enough? Turns out it isn't: that it actually only uniquely identifies things when it's used in a context. Nevertheless, you don't get buy-in unless what you are proposing is clearly better than what people already have. It's difficult to persuade someone that a human-readable system that has worked just fine (more or less) for 300 years needs to be fixed, particularly when the fix is 'urn:lsid:lsid:biodiversity.org.au:afd.name:291425'.
Hi Paul,
I am using part of an email from another conversation, but it seems to apply here.
Why use URI's instead of string literals?
Aren't the semantics the same?
No for a couple of reasons.
Is <scientificName>mus musculus</scientificName> the same as <scientificName>Mus musculus</scientificName> ?
More importantly by using a "cool URI" http://www.w3.org/TR/cooluris/
<Occurrence> <hasScientificName rdf:resource="http://example.org/id/12345<http://mymuseum.org/specimens/id/12345>" /> </Occurrence>
Any other statements or data sets with http://example.org/id/12345http://mymuseum.org/specimens/id/12345 are linked and findable.
This is not the case with the integer id, or a string literal
Also triple and quadstores can handle URI's *much* more efficiently than plain text or UTF-8 text. (32 bytes per triple)
Lastly, Literals cannot be used as subjects in triples.
Is the current GNI RDF the greatest things since sliced bread?
No, it is a start and a needed part of a system to track name use, name to name relations and name to concept relations etc.
Also the systems are moving toward formatting the human readable views such that the URI is replaced with the rdfs:Label.
You can already see this in this example from Sig.ma where the URI's are replaced in the human view with the names of states etc.
http://sig.ma/search?pid=95b2be387166066bf7aa9c1a1c661611
So the human view is the string people are used to seeing, but hidden from view is the URI that ties that name to other data.
Respectfully,
- Pete
--------------------------------------------------------------- Pete DeVries Department of Entomology University of Wisconsin - Madison 445 Russell Laboratories 1630 Linden Drive Madison, WI 53706 TaxonConcept Knowledge Base http://www.taxonconcept.org/ / GeoSpecies Knowledge Base http://lod.geospecies.org/ About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base http://about.geospecies.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------