Leigh Dodds wrote:

btw, where would look for an update/docs on the new standard? I'm curious whether any consideration was given to using RDF, which provides a good framework for collating data about resources from multiple sources and using multiple vocabularies.

(For docs see http://160.45.63.11/Projects/TDWG-SDD/index.html. The minutes and xsd draft changes from Paris are not finished yet by me, however. Also Kevin is writing some introduction to the whole of SDD, that hopefully makes it easier to understand.)

The application of RDF to SDD has been repeatedly discussed -- and is currently avoided. It probably would be a good thing, everybody agrees so, but most do not understand it well enough to really work with it or profit from the definitional documents. I failed to understand them. So we decided to try without RDF, rather than debating little understood things. Any review of our results from you would be great. If you can, come to Lisbon!

Gregor ---------------------------------------------------------- Gregor Hagedorn (G.Hagedorn@bba.de) Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biosafety Federal Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA) Koenigin-Luise-Str. 19 Tel: +49-30-8304-2220 14195 Berlin, Germany Fax: +49-30-8304-2203

Often wrong but never in doubt!