On the taxonomic heirarchy thread - I agree wholeheartedly that the heirarchy should not be part of the description. Could it rather be a recommended link to a classification?

We often come across the situation where one person has a diferent view of the hierarchy to another. If the heirarchy is not part of the descriptive data but can be refered to from an alternative source then would it be possible to use one (or another) source depending on your point of view. That way you could follow say the ITIS calssification if it suits or if the framework is published any other hierarchy that supports the framework interface.

Tim

--------------------------------------------------------- Database Manager Centre for Research on Introduced Marine Pests GPO Box 1538, Hobart Tas 7000, Australia. Phone : (03) 62325222 (switch), (03) 62325213 (direct) Mobile: 0411 560057 Fax : (03) 62325485 E-mail: tim.jones@marine.csiro.au ---------------------------------------------------------

-----Original Message----- From: Steve Shattuck [mailto:Steve.Shattuck@CSIRO.AU] Sent: Tuesday, 27 November 2001 1:36 PM To: TDWG-SDD@USOBI.ORG Subject: Taxonomic hierarchy in SDD

The full taxonomic hierarchy of the included taxa/items certainly must be supported by the standard (and it will be addressed after we deal with simple characters, states and items). If the creator of the dataset doesn't think it's important then they can choose to leave it out; if the user of the data doesn't think it's important then they can ignore it. This will be especially important if we intend to support inheritance and compilation up and down the classification (as has been suggested by several of us).

Jumping the gun a bit, I would think these relationships would be stored either as a separate nested set of elements with ID's linking to specific items, or the items themselves would be nested with parent items containing their children.

Steve Shattuck CSIRO Entomology biolink@ento.csiro.au