Hi Everyone -
Javier and I chatted yesterday about unresolved technical issues. Our primary goal was simplicity. Here are the outcomes. Feel free to suggest something different, if either i) you're planning on developing around your suggestion; or ii) you believe that to not follow your suggestion would be a grave mistake.
NOTE: by "app" we mean anything that is writing to the table - could be a smartphone app, could be a web form, could be a screenscraper or tweet-parser.
1. All apps will write to the same table. Each app will need a Google account, which will be given write-access to the table.
2. The occurrence_id will be the row_id assigned by Fusion Tables. This is not seen in the web interface, but is available from the API.
3. To support crowdsourcing of image identification, alternative identifications, arguments, etc., there will be a 2nd table with columns {occurrence_id, scientificName, vernacularName, Kingdom, identifiedBy, identificationResources, identificationRemarks}. One of each of these columns will also exist in the Occurrences table. When the observation is first reported, any identification will be entered in the Occurrences table, with subsequent identifications in the Identifications table. (The main motivation for keeping the initial identification in the Occurrences table is to ease the process for app developers.)
4. Multiple multimedia URLs will be listed in a single column, comma separated.
5. The lat and long columns will be WGS84. If app developers wish, they are welcome to build support for additional datums into their apps, since the apps will have authority to create additional columns. If this doesn't happen, anyone planning to use another datum will need to announce themselves ahead of time, and we will create appropriate columns for them.
6. The table will contain Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, and Family columns. Javier will write software to resolve identifications to the Catalog of Life, and to populate the taxonomy columns. If someones want to resolve observations to a different classification, they are free to do so, and are encouraged to publish the results in Fusion Tables.
7. In addition to the identification table, there is scope for creating an Annotations table and front-end, should anyone wish to tackle this.
Here's a timetable that would be nice to adhere to:
Sept. 1: Final versions of the Occurrences and Identifications tables published to Fusion Tables. Write access will only be granted to developers. These will be the test tables. The day before the bioblitz, they will become the development tables, and test records will be expunged.
Sept. 3: Table documentation and sample code for writing to the tables.
Sept. 8: Taxanomic resolution, validation, assignment of taxon GUIDS/LSIDs.
Sept. 15: At least one Image identification framework in place.
Sept. 15 - Sept. 28: Testing and work on visualization and other data-oriented services (e.g. publication as DwC or Linked Data, etc.)
Best to all - Joel.