RE: [TDWG-GUID] RDF/architecture/ontology - migrationDear all,

I hope this contribution will arrive at the mailing list, for some reasons my last mail did't appear ..

I would like to direct your attention to the handle.net system which basically is what is behind DOI. It can be found at http://www.handle .net. Using DOI itself would cause additional expenses, not too much, but has to be kept in mind. In contrary by choosing the handle.net and setting up an own handle server (or more), it would be for 'free'.

The most important thing is that DOI / handle.net offers a system to _globally resolve_ unique identifiers!

What do I mean by global resolution? Following the discussion here I sometimes have the impression that it is not completely understood what GUIDs are for and global resolving is the most important.

A nice example was currently given to me by our 'DOI guru' here at the WDC-MARE: The national library of congress is using handle.net. The example has the id: loc.music/musdi.101. Very interesting is that you can use the DOI handle server to resolve to the particular document the id points to: http://dx.doi.org/loc.music/musdi.101 Other handle server would also direct to the correct location of the object: http://www.handle.net//loc.music/musdi.101 or http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/musdi.101 , The handle server at the National Library of Congress!

Try the urls and you'll see that eg. DOI and NC redirect to the correct page. This is what this system makes so powerful! It works similar to the DNS system which allows to globally find the correct IP for a given web address.

So it would not make a difference what identifying system you would choose, either the LSID or the DOI style or something else, as sson as it is globally unique and is handled by handle.net, the digital object which is behind the identifyer would be found.

I hope this helps..

best regards,

Dr. Robert Huber WDC-MARE / PANGAEA - www.pangaea.de, www.wdc-mare.org Stratigraphy.net - www.stratigraphy.net _____________________________________________ MARUM - Institute for Marine Environmental Sciences (location) University Bremen Leobener Strasse POP 330 440 28359 Bremen Phone ++49 421 218-65593, Fax ++49 421 218-65505 e-mail rhuber@wdc-mare.org, robert.huber@stratigraphy.net

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Taxonomic Databases Working Group GUID Project [mailto:TDWG-GUID@LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU]Im Auftrag von Chuck Miller Gesendet: Montag, 21. November 2005 22:13 An: TDWG-GUID@LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU Betreff: Re: RDF/architecture/ontology - migration

Do we want GUIDs that are dependent upon a specific protocol or schema?

Seems like the ideal would be an approach that disconnects them so that the decisions for GUIDs and for protocols and schemas can be made separately.

From what I've been hearing so far the GUID is embedded inside of something else, like LSID or DOI. That is, the unique identifier part is wrapped inside something that is understandable only by a specific protocol or locating mechanism. Is this unavoidable?

Chuck

Chuck Miller Chief Information Officer Missouri Botanical Garden 4344 Shaw Blvd St. Louis, MO 63119

-----Original Message----- From: Roger Hyam [mailto:roger@TDWG.ORG] Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 4:40 AM To: TDWG-GUID@LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU Subject: [TDWG-GUID] RDF/architecture/ontology - migration

This is carrying on from Steve's comments under the "Taxon debate synthesis?" thread. I started a new thread as it seemed to be getting a little deep and no longer fitting the title.

Steve's comments are hitting the nail right on the head. From the conversations and thoughts I am having about architecture of TDWG standards all roads are leading to RDF - which is annoying because it makes writing balanced documents that compare the alternatives difficult :)

Steve outlined one of the most promising paths forward for TDWG standards. Taking this route is not a matter of just saying "lets do it all in RDF" there would be a long way to go if we went this way - but at least we would be doing things the same way the rest of the semantic web world and that means there are tools and people out there to help.

The one point Steve didn't stress is that RDF is the "bees knees" for data handshaking - i.e. combining data from different domains. This means that the extensibility and version problems that are our main hurdles as the moment will tend to go away. But have no fear there will be other problems to replace them.

I am comfortable talking about GUIDs in terms of moving towards representing TDWG data in RDF. It certainly makes more sense of the GUID discussions to me. But...

What we need to bear in mind is that there is a great deal of knowledge captured in XML Schema within the TDWG community and that knowledge (or at least the good bits of it) need to be migrated forwards. People have also invested a great deal of effort in developing XML Schemas and may be reluctant to move on.

This is all leading to TAG stuff rather than GUID stuff but as Steve and Rod and others point out the two are very closely connected - along with the protocol stuff...

How much should the GUID debate assume that we are using current XML Schema based standards and how much should it assume a move to an RDF style approach - or doesn't it matter?

Roger

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------------------------------------- Roger Hyam Technical Architect Taxonomic Databases Working Group ------------------------------------- http://www.tdwg.org roger@tdwg.org +44 1578 722782 -------------------------------------