July 2007 - tdwg-tag - lists.tdwg.org

[tdwg-guid] LSID metadata persistence (or lack thereof)
by Ricardo Pereira 18 Jul '07

18 Jul '07

Hi there folks, As Chuck mentioned a few weeks ago, we do have a few outstanding issues to address regarding LSIDs. I would like to discuss those one by one, in an orderly manner, and reach consensus as much as we can. Then we can sum them up in a TDWG standard, possibly by or shortly after the Bratislava conference. The first issue I would like to discuss is *LSID metadata persistence*. First, let me remind you of a corollary established by the LSID specification: * Corollary 1: *_LSIDs are not guaranteed to be resolvable indefinitely._ In other words, there is no guarantee that one will always be able to retrieve the data associated with an LSID as the authority may choose (or be forced) not to resolve an LSID anymore. Second, let me distinguish this kind of persistence I'm talking about from other two related concepts (which we'll not discuss in this thread): 1) *Persistence of Assignment: *Once assigned to an object, an LSID is indefinitely associated with it. The same LSID cannot be assigned to another object. Ever! The LSID may not be resolvable anymore, but it cannot be assigned to another object. This is established by the LSID specification. 2) *Persistence of LSID Data: *The data associated with an LSID (i.e, the byte stream returned by the LSID getData call) must never change. Although the LSID may not be resolvable anymore (according to corollary 1), the data associated with an LSID must never ever change. That's defined by the LSID spec, too. What I want to discuss here is the *persistence of LSID metadata* (what is returned by the getMetadata call) or the lack thereof. A use case associated with *metadata persistence* is when someone collects observation records (and implicitly, their determinations) and runs an experiment (a model or simulation) with it. This person may want to record the identifiers of the points used so that someone using the results of that experiment may refer back to the primary data, to validate or repeat it the experiment. The bad news is that LSID identification scheme (or any other GUID that I know of) was not designed to guarantee *metadata persistence*, and thus it cannot implement the use case above by itself. To implement that use case, the specification would have to *guarantee* that the metadata (which we are using here as data) is immutable. But it doesn't. Most of us wish that metadata was persistent, but it isn't. Many things can change in the metadata: a new determination, a mispeling that is corrected, many things. We just cannot guarantee that the metadata will look like it was sometime ago. We then reach the following conclusion. *Corollary 2: *LSIDs metadata is not immutable nor persistent. The consequence of this corollary is that, if you need to refer back to a piece of information (metadata) associated with an LSID, exactly as it was when you got it, you *must make a copy of it*, or arrange that someone else make that copy for you. In other words, a client cannot *assume* that the metadata associated with an LSID today will be the same tomorrow. If the client does assume that, it may be relying on a false assumption and its output may be flawed. If we are not happy with that conclusion, we may develop an additional component in our architecture, an archive of some sort, to handle (meta)data persistence. That is exactly what the STD-DOI project (http://www.std-doi.de/) and SEEK (http://seek.ecoinformatics.org) have done to some extent. While we cannot guarantee that LSID metadata is persistent nor immutable, we can definitely document how the metadata have changed through *metadata **versioning*. That's the topic of the next thread. We will move on to discuss *metadata **versioning* as soon as we are done with *metadata persistence*. Cheers, Ricardo

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[tdwg-tapir] error in tapir specification
by Wouter Addink 17 Jul '07

17 Jul '07

Hi, I think there is an error in the KVP Inventory examples in the Tapir specification doc. Examples like http://example.net/tapir.cgi?op=inventory&concept=http://example.net/schema… concept=http://example.net/schema1/Genus cannot be implemented I think, because concept will not be treated as an array here and only the last concept would be returned. this would work: http://example.net/tapir.cgi?op=inventory&concept[]=http://example.net/sche… concept[]=http://example.net/schema1/Genus regards, Wouter Addink

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[tdwg-guid] Announcing the new LSID website
by Ricardo Pereira 13 Jul '07

13 Jul '07

Dear tdwg-guid subscribers, A new website has been established at http://lsids.sf.net as the new entry point for the development of new LSID software and documentation. The new website is at a different location from the previous Sourceforge site (lsid.sf.net) as IBM has ceased to support this site. We have added a trailing 's' for specification or software, while the original site is now for reference. The new website includes * An introduction to LSID and links to more detailed documentation for those not familiar with the identification scheme and its resolution protocol * Links to LSID resources, such as LSID software releases and downloads, Rod Page's LSID authority tester, the TDWG LSID on-line resolver, version control system and mail lists * Regularly updated news entries about LSID software, newly deployed authorities and related information (available as an RSS feed) * The LSID plug-in for the Firefox browser that enables it to resolve LSIDs using the lsidres: protocol handler. A new SourceForge developers website at http://www.sf.net/projects/lsids is supported by Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG - www.tdwg.org) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF - www.gbif.org) and volunteers. This site features- * A new release of the LSID Browser for Firefox (v1.0.1) which is available for download * A new LSID source code repository and version control system using Subversion (SVN) The old developers website (http://www.sf.net/projects/lsid) will maintain: * All previous major releases of LSID software (such as the client and server software stacks in Java and Perl), * The CVS source code repository with all history of LSID software development (only for reference, as all new development must use the new SVN repository) * The issue tracker, and * The lsid-developer mailing list. We hope that the new LSID websites will be effective. Questions or suggestions are welcomed. Best regards, Ricardo Pereira Systems Administrator and Software Engineer Biodiversity Information Systems - TDWG

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[tdwg-guid] Call for presentations on LSIDs for the TDWG 2007 Conference
by Ricardo Pereira 12 Jul '07

12 Jul '07

Dear TDWG-GUID subscribers, We will have a session titled "LSIDs: Gluing it together to meet users' needs" at the upcoming TDWG 2007 Annual Conference in Bratislava from 11h00 to 12h30 on Tuesday, 18 September. We would like to use this time to present relevant LSIDs/GUID work from our community. This is a general call for 10-15 minute presentations for this session. We would be interested in hearing about- - Examples of successful use of LSIDs and other identifiers in our community - Best practices and guidelines on issuing, management, and persistence of identifiers - Anything regarding LSIDs or GUIDs that will assist our community We are also interested in hearing about use cases and metadata for representing digital (or physical) objects. These use-cases, however, may be more appropriate in the ontologies and vocabularies session or on client needs. Please contact me as soon as possible if you are interested in presenting. The conference schedule (see [1] below) is extremely compact, so there is time for only 6 presentations. Alternatively, there is plenty of room for posters or computer demonstrations. Best regards, Ricardo Pereira References: [1] TDWG 2007 conference schedule: http://www.tdwg.org/conference2007/programme/schedule/

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[tdwg-tapir] TAPIR Network Builders' Guide
by Renato De Giovanni 10 Jul '07

10 Jul '07

Dear all, There's a new document about TAPIR available. It's called the "TAPIR Network Builders' Guide" which you can find here: http://www.tdwg.org/activities/tapir/network-builders-guide/ Please feel free to contact me if you have any comments, ideas or suggestions about the document. I hope you find it useful. Best Regards, -- Renato PS: Later this week I'll revise the last messages about metadata issues and then I'll update the specification and the schema if necessary.

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[tdwg-tapir] r1224 - tapir/dev/schema
by svn＠rs.tdwg.org 03 Jul '07

03 Jul '07

Author: RenatoDeGiovanni Date: 2007-07-03 05:21:34 +0200 (Tue, 03 Jul 2007) New Revision: 1224 Modified: tapir/dev/schema/tapir.xsd Log: Added custom slot to element hasContent. Modified: tapir/dev/schema/tapir.xsd =================================================================== --- tapir/dev/schema/tapir.xsd 2007-07-02 17:42:35 UTC (rev 1223) +++ tapir/dev/schema/tapir.xsd 2007-07-03 03:21:34 UTC (rev 1224) @@ -1744,6 +1744,7 @@ <xsd:sequence> <xsd:element name="role" type="contactRoleExtensionType" maxOccurs="unbounded" /> <xsd:element ref="vcard:VCARD"/> + <xsd:element ref="custom" minOccurs="0"/> </xsd:sequence> </xsd:complexType> </xsd:element>

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TAG Roadmap / TAG Meeting / Call for Papers
by Roger Hyam 02 Jul '07

02 Jul '07

Dear TDWG TAG Members, TAG Roadmap for 2007 The stated strategy of the Technical Architecture Group is to: "Produce a yearly review and forecast of technical issues within TDWG prior to the annual meeting - The Roadmap." To this end I have started compiling the roadmap on a wiki page here: http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/TAG/RoadMap2007 Currently the document is almost empty! There is a good reason for this. Although, as convener of the group, if falls on me to make sure this document is delivered I would like to give TAG members every opportunity to influence its contents. I am aware that the Roadmap document for 2006 was mainly a distillation of discussions at the first TAG meeting but this year we have not had a dedicated meeting and I want to give you the opportunity to express your views now. Please take a moment to consider what you think should be in this report and add your thoughts to the wiki page. Bear in mind that the role of the TAG is to make recommendations to other TDWG groups and the executive and that this document is our main vehicle for doing so. I plan to turn the wiki page into a text document in the last week of July and fix a final version by the beginning of August. TAG Meeting 2007 I have requested a room for up to 15 people for 1400 - 1700 hrs on Sunday 16 September prior to the Bratislava meeting. This will be an opportunity for the TAG to meet. You are cordially invited to attend this meeting. Please let me know if you are coming and if you have any issues that you are particularly keen to discuss. The 2007 roadmap will have been completed and distributed by this point so discussion will be around matters arising from this and planning for the 2008 roadmap. Request for Papers I am chairing a 1.5 hour session on Tuesday 18 September "Ontologies and vocabularies: Atomizing biodiversity information". If you would like to present your work during this session please contact me as soon as possible. All the best, Roger ____________________________________________________________ Roger Hyam <roger(a)tdwg.org> ____________________________________________________________ Biodiversity Information Standards: http://www.tdwg.org/ "Working To Make Biodiversity Data Global" ____________________________________________________________ TDWG Standards Architecture: http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/TAG LSID RDF Vocabularies: http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/TAG/ LsidVocs ____________________________________________________________

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