Morphological Data Representation

Robert A. (Bob) Morris ram at CS.UMB.EDU
Mon Nov 26 13:58:29 CET 2001


Mauro J. Cavalcanti writes:
 > Date:         Mon, 26 Nov 2001 15:21:52 -0200
 > From: "Mauro J. Cavalcanti" <maurobio at acd.ufrj.br>
 > To: TDWG-SDD at usobi.org
 > Subject:      Re: Morphological Data Representation
 >
 > ...
 >
 > What I miss is an integration of the morphological data representation with the
 > representation of the taxonomic hierarchy (that has never been properly dealt
 > with by DELTA) in a single XML format for the purpose of storing and exchanging
 > taxonomic datasets. Gilmour's "Taxonomic Markup Language"
 > (http://www.albany.edu/~gilmr/pubxml/ ) could provide a good start in this
 > direction.
 >
 > I would appreciate very much any comments in this connection.

My feeling is that taxonomic hierarchy is best got by web applications
from services such as ITIS or other web services offering XML. There
is a large community of descriptive data consumers, e.g. field
naturalists, that find taxonomic hierarchy generally
uninteresting. IMO, trying to integrate it with descriptive data
actually addresses a small group of applications at a cost of added
complexity.




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