Ruud,
Yes, I appreciate your problems. I think that Marc and Donald and I will be discussing this on a conference call.
Neil
-----Original Message----- From: tdwg-ncd-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-ncd-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Ruud Altenburg Sent: 18 July 2007 09:19 To: Butler, Carol Cc: Neil Thomson; Barbara Mathe; Natural Collections Descriptions mailing list; Roger Hyam; Peter Schalk Subject: [tdwg-ncd] Terminology plus problems
Hallo all,
my last-minute proposal to the terminology would be to remove 'unknown' from any list of terms because this term is not very useful as a keyword. Did we really settle on majorDiscipline and broadTaxa? I think the latter term may not really be self explanatory.
Probably you will be tired of this but let me explain my problems one last time.
I started this GBIF project in mid April. The project definition was written was on the assumption that most of the code we used for a database based on NCD v0.5 (NLBIF metadatabase) could be reused. It's now three months later(!) and there still is no finalized schema I can build on. Yes, the RDF version is 'almost complete' but the relationships between keywords and collections have not yet been determined yet. Also the new terminology contains two properties not yet implemented in the schema.
I had a proper look at the draft v0.8 schema yesterday and noticed that the keyword section has changed a lot since v0.5. This effectively means I will have to completely change the database tables and the PHP pages to add/update/delete records. The import from NoDIT databases was written to support NCD v0.5, so that goes out of the window as well.
Constructing a database plus entry tool is only part of ETI's project definition. We also need to build an import tool and a webservice. After the meeting I thought it would be a matter of days rather than a few weeks before a definite NCD schema would be ready. However, it now is exactly one month on and I still have had no sign when a version will be 'locked' so I can start.
Today we will meet at ETI to discuss this project, because we will need to report to GBIF about these problems. It's now very clear that we will not be able to meet the September deadline. Also quite a bit of the GBIF funding has gone into time that has been wasted because things keep changing over time. For now I think it's best stop this project until I have received a definite schema.
Regards,
Ruud
On 17 Jul, 2007, at 21:48, Butler, Carol wrote:
Hi Everyone,
As I didn't hear disagreement with the elements <majorDiscipline>, <broadTaxa> and the July 11 revisions to <collectionType>, I think we've essentially come to a decision on those elements.
If we still have decisions to make on the acceptable terms to be used in the elements, let's aim to get that done by July 23. Neil has forwarded a list of Institution terms he found, and while there is some overlap there are terms that we should include. I will clip out the section of the spreadsheet for that element and send you a revision of acceptable terms for <institutionType> only.
Cheers Carol
-----Original Message----- From: Ruud Altenburg [mailto:ruud@eti.uva.nl] Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 9:52 AM To: Markus Döring Cc: Neil Thomson; Constance Rinaldo; Butler, Carol; Guenter.Waibel@rlg.org; Barbara Mathe; Doug Holland; Natural Collections Descriptions mailing list; Wouter Addink Subject: Re: Terminology version 2
Hallo all,
we havent finally decided yet I believe. Or have we?
As the latest schema involved changes to the properties themselves, preferably I would like to see these determined ASAP. The terms can be added later, that's no problem.
if you use the ISO codes that is kind of language independant I would say. And wouldnt it be enough to use ISO 639-1 only? do we really need dialects, british vs american english etc?
For languages possibly that would be the case, although probably not everybody would associate e.g. 'deu' with German ;) But even if we stick to 'just' 185 languages, it is impossible to translate the terminology Excel document to all those languages...
And if I may add another question: how should I interpret the TaxonCoverageStrength, CommonNameCoverageStrength, etc properties exactly? In the schema as displayed by Oxygen they seem completely synonymous with TaxonCoverage, CommonNameCoverage, etc.
Regards,
Ruud
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