[tdwg-content] Use of TCS [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Bob Morris]

How nice it would have been if http://www.tdwg.org/schemas/tcs/1.01
had all its data types, especially the ComplexTypes, at the top level,
and in a separate file, and the rest would use mainly those types to
define a preferred TCS data set structure.  Then there would have been
\the/ TCS vocabulary, and \a/ TCS exchange structure and you could
reuse and extend the Types. That's what we did in SDD, though it leads
to the need for lots of key, keyref use to put contextual restrictions
on the particular exchange structure. People find it hard to
understand, and complain that you have introduced needless
complexity.(But Computer Science grad students admire it. :-)  ).
I've fallen out of love with XML-Schema except for the huge set of
high quality tools around, and the useful JAXB databinding framework
now fully embedded in Java. And its pretty good for specifying
software configuration.

Bob Morris

Robert A. Morris
Emeritus Professor  of Computer Science
UMASS-Boston
100 Morrissey Blvd
Boston, MA 02125-3390
Associate, Harvard University Herbaria
email: morris.bob at gmail.com
web: http://bdei.cs.umb.edu/
web: http://etaxonomy.org/mw/FilteredPush
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram
phone (+1) 857 222 7992 (mobile)


On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 9:07 PM, Paul Murray <pmurray at anbg.gov.au> wrote:
>
> On 25/11/2010, at 12:03 PM, <Tony.Rees at csiro.au> <Tony.Rees at csiro.au> wrote:
>
>> Maybe an answer would be to use TCS not DwC for exchange of purely taxonomic data? How about creating a TCSA format for bulk transfer - or is this not a great thought... (not being that familiar with TCS)
>
>
> We had all sorts of hideous, intractable problems with TCS, and have abandoned it.
>
> [snip]



-- 
Robert A. Morris
Emeritus Professor  of Computer Science
UMASS-Boston
100 Morrissey Blvd
Boston, MA 02125-3390
Associate, Harvard University Herbaria
email: morris.bob at gmail.com
web: http://bdei.cs.umb.edu/
web: http://etaxonomy.org/mw/FilteredPush
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram
phone (+1) 857 222 7992 (mobile)