I'm interested to see that the subject of the dwc:ResourceRelationship class has come up again. I have lost track of the number of times I've asked this question (I think it's somewhere around 4 times now) on the list without an answer: can anyone show me a functioning example where somebody is actually using the ResourceRelationship terms in any form? I have previously concluded from lack of response that there isn't actually anybody who has used them, but I would be happy to for someone to show that I'm wrong.

If I am understanding the use of the ResourceRelationship terms correctly (which I'm not at all sure about), dwc:resourceID represents an identifier for the subject of the relationship, dwc:relatedResourceID represents an identifier for the object of the relationship, and resourceRelationshipID represents an identifier for an _instance_ of a relationship which is further elaborated in the record for that instance by providing a string value for relationshipOfResource (using a controlled vocabulary) along with additional information about the relationships (according to whom, date, remarks). What I think I'm hearing in this thread is a desire to start using these terms more widely and to improve interoperability by standardizing the vocabulary used for relationshipOfResource. I also think I'm hearing that it would be a good idea for values the xxID terms to be GUIDs.

So what I'm wondering is why doing that would be better than just creating URI-identified object properties (a.k.a. predicates) that describe the relationship between the object and subject? Using the ResourceRelationship terms just makes "understanding" the relationship harder by requiring that the data consumer "look up" the value of the relationshipOfResource string for every instance of a relationship and then figure out if it's the same kind of relationship as one that the consumer already knows or cares about. As I see it, the bottom line is that if we agree that it would be a best-practice for the xxID values to be GUIDs (which would either be URIs or could be URIs that are proxied UUIDs for UUID believers) and that the relationships should be standardized, then the resource relationships boil down to RDF triples. There's a URI for the subject, a URI for the object, and there could be a URI for the relationshipOfResource which would have an rdfs:label property that was the controlled value for the string that describes the relationship. The only difference that I see is that the RDF triples could be more efficient to handle.

Don't like RDF or are scared of it? Fine, make yourself an Excel spreadsheet with three columns headed "subject", "predicate", and "object" (or use your favorite database method). Put the appropriate URI in each column. Viola! Resource relationships.

The one thing about implementing the ResourceRelationship class vocabulary that I think may be an improvement is use of the generic terms for "by whom", "date", and "remarks". At the present moment, we are in the process of expanding DwC by adding class-specific terms to do these things in nearly every class. We have recordedBy, georeferencedBy, identifiedBy, occurrenceRemarks, locationRemarks, eventDate, georeferencedDate, etc. rather than just using relationshipAccordingTo, relationshipEstablishedDate, and relationshipRemarks which could do the same thing generically in any class. Add columns to the above-described Excel spreadsheet for relationshipAccordingTo, relationshipEstablishedDate, and relationshipRemarks if you want to track those things.

I think I understand why the ResourceRelationship class was created. It seems like a way to move forward under the worse-case scenario where GUIDs never get off the ground, where no one ever agrees what the core biodiversity classes are, and where no one ever establishes object properties that connect those classes. But if no one ever has the guts to try to lay out the core classes and object properties that connect them, then what good are a million unstandardized ResourceRelationship instances that can't be unambiguously IDed? Nobody will ever be able to figure out anything useful from them and Rod Page's prophecy of doom will come true.

Somebody please show me where I'm wrong here...
Steve

Richard Pyle wrote:

Hmmm.... watch out for that tricky word "valid".  It means different things
to botanists & zoologists. The term "accepted" is generally seen as a more
code-neutral term to mean "valid" (sensu zoology) or "correct"/"accepted"
(sensu botany).  But if you mean "valid" in the botanical sense (="validly
published", or "available" sensu zoology).  I'm not entirely sure which
sense of "valid" is meant in this context.


More fundamentally, however, I'd like to report that a number of folks at
TDWG seemed to have converged on the same idea that, perhaps, we should be
using resourceRelationship more frequently (perhaps a *LOT* more
frequently).  A lot of these terms that effectively represent the functional
equivalent to "foreign keys" might be better packaged in the more open-ended
structure of resourceRelationship.  In fact, at one of the sessions at TDWG
(I believe it was at the AudubonCore break-out session), we discussed the
idea of DwCA "2.0", which would essentially define n-number of "Cores", and
then package the relationships among them via a set of resourceRelationship
records.  This idea emerged from a discussion about how people have been
trying to "force" many-to-many sorts of data into the one-to-many DwCA
format.  The beauty of using a more generic resourceRelationship set for
this function is that it allows one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many
relationships all in one structure.  It may seem klunky now, but if we used
it as a general method to describe all relationships between instances of
DwC "classes", it would become pretty straightforward, I think.

Something to think about, anyway...

Aloha,
Rich

-----Original Message-----
From: tdwg-content-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-content-
bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Tony.Rees@csiro.au
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 4:34 PM
To: mdoering@gbif.org
Cc: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org
Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Expressing some relationships in DwC?

Hi Markus,

You wrote:

I begin to wonder if a new term dwc:validNameUsageID would solve this
issue gracefully and remove the need for a relationship extension.

Yes, I believe this would cover both the cases I need, I think, when
accompanied by nomenclatural status = misspelling / nomenclatural status =
nomen nudum... - comments, anyone?

Cheers - Tony

________________________________________
From: "Markus Döring (GBIF)" [mdoering@gbif.org]
Sent: Wednesday, 26 October 2011 1:43 AM
To: Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart)
Cc: tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org
Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] Expressing some relationships in DwC?

Hi Tony,
thanks for these practical questions. See inline for answers.
Markus

I have a few nomenclatural relationships between name that I would like

to

express using DwC, and would like to know the preferred way to do this if
any. The relationships are as follows:

(1) Point a nomen novum to the basionym it replaces. From reading there

was formerly a concept basionym/basionymID, apparently this is now
replaced with originalNameUsage/originalNameUsageID. So one quesiton is,
is this sufficient to infer this is a basionym, when accompanied by
noneclaturalStatus = 'nomen novum'?
yes, that is exactly right. As far as I understand the term basionym is

more of

a botanical term and was not used as the final dwc term therefore.

(2) Point an orthographic variant to the name which it is a variant of

(whether or not the latter is now the accepted name). In other words, if
name A is a variant of name B which is now a synonym of name C, I capture
the A=>C relationship with a synonym assertion, but I want a way to
capteure the A=>B relationship too.
This is only possible with an extension I am afraid. For example the

generic

dwc relationship one:
http://rs.gbif.org/extension/dwc/resource_relation.xml

(3) Point a nomen nudum to a validly published instance that comes later

(or do the same in reverse, i.e. this name was preceded by xxx as a nomen
nudum). Again, this should be independent of whether the validly published
name is an accepted name or now a synonym of something else.
same problem as above.
I begin to wonder if a new term dwc:validNameUsageID would solve this
issue gracefully and remove the need for a relationship extension.

Advice appreciated,

Regards - Tony Rees
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