Hi,

Thanks for the interesting discussion on descriptive data! This is of high relevance to the germplasm genebanks as well.

Assigning a GUID to phenotype (character) would allow a statement like disease resistance measured on specimen GUID_#s1 according to the measurement method described and defined by GUID_#p1 (which could for example be percent of leaf covered by fungus or similar). Food crop phenotypes are often measured according to measurement standards defined and published by IPGRI or UPOV. I think persistent actionable GUIDs for the characters would be of great value and that we would soon see plant breeders and scientists collecting public phenotype data if the measured values (states) from different datasets are made more readily interoperable. Assigning GUIDs are however not the complete solution. The context of the measurement (like for example climate, humidity) would make the scored values incomparable without information on this modifier. I think this is addressed by SDD. Comparing phenotype states from different datasets and different context are much more challenging than uniquely identifying characters and states. But it would be one nice step in a useful direction.

Cheers Dag Terje

Quoting Roger Hyam roger@tdwg.org:

Hi Robert,

I think you restated the question well. I am afraid I have the question just now but not the answer ;)

To me it seems to make more sense for a user to string concepts together to make a meaning rather than defining every possible contextual meaning. So if a central thesaurus defined flower and colour they could be strung together as a series of assertions in a descriptive document. In N3:

mytaxa:rose myterms:has _:att . _:att rdf:type myterms:flower . _:att myterms:is myterms:red .

There would still be room for specific complex predicates and objects to be defined centrally but in general this appears to allow for greater flexibility in an open system. It might not suite all tastes though.

Roger

Robert Huber wrote:

Thank you Roger!

I heard about DELTA and SDD seems to be very interesting! So when we

are thinking about GUIDs in this context I assume you would assign a GUID on the 'contextual meaning of terms'? E.g. what open means when you describe a open umbilicus?

A GUID would then direct the user to a document/ db entry which

explains that ? Or would the GUID be assigned to a complete SDD description?

best regards, Robert