Thanks for the gentle reminder of where we are ultimately headed.
I guess I'm expressing some disappointment relating to the "bicycle vs. space shuttle" problem discussed earlier. The BioLink team have put together quite a nice little bike and are now zoning around town having a great time. The SDD discussion seems to still be lying in a grassy field (or on the railroad tracks?) gazing at the stars and dreaming of space ships.
We're not even close to putting together a single data model that works with even a single application, forget about sharing multiple data models across multiple applications. Yes, that will come and I understand the power of it, but let's get a system that can represent DELTA/Intkey and LucID data now, the data we currently hold and the applications we currently use. By all means we should keep dreaming and planning and exploring. And when new applications appear and want to share or extend our data then we share and extend it. It's the classic problem of deciding when to put down the pencil and paper and pick up the hammer and saw. We've been at this for a year now, it's time to get dirty.
Thanks, Steve Shattuck
P.S. - I'll give the DTD generator a try as soon as the current BioLink XML import finishes.