[tdwg-content] Darwin Core vs. Simple Darwin Core

[Peter DeVries]

This is a little bit of a hack but it should work.

dwc:vernacularName
   dwc:vernacularName_en
   dwc:vernacularName_fr

The language variants are subproperties of the dwc:vernacularName

This would also avoid the somewhat awkward SPARQL queries needed when you
want to query for "Name"@en and not "Name"@es

* For a more semantic web friendly version I was thinking of the following
predicate hierarchy.

hasTaxonName
  hasAcceptedName
  hasOriginalName
  hasVernacularName = hasCommonName

The GNI URI forms would be

hasTaxonNameID
  hasAcceptedNameID
  hasOriginalNameID
  hasHeterochresonymID
  hasHeterotypicNameID
  hasHomotypicNameID
  hasOrthochresonymID

I have an example of this in the Knowledge Base.

It still has a bug in that the GNI URI's should have been replaced with
their human readable skos:prefLabels as they are in URIburner and Sig.ma.

You can click through the related things in this KB view. bit.ly
http://bit.ly/oz9pJC

http://lsd.taxonconcept.org/describe/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgni.globalnames.org%2Frgs%2F12341234

Note how you can click between the links to the taxonomic authors etc, and
the links to citebank.org web pages (not LOD RDF resources)

- Pete

On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 10:47 AM, joel sachs <jsachs at csee.umbc.edu> wrote:

>
> Darwin Core is one of my favourite things. It's simple, elegant, and
> flexible. I wasn't there at design time, so I don't know if it was
> designed with the semantic web in mind, but it looks like it. It is, as
> John put it, primarily a collection of terms [and their definitions]. So
> if two people/agents use the same terms, they will share the same
> semantics. (This is why I think that a "more semantic Darwin Core" is not
> the appropriate goal for a Darwin Core/rdf working group.)
>
> I'm concerned that there's so much confusion concerning DwC, since
> confusion is (typically) a barrier to adoption.
>
> One source of confusion is Simple Darwin Core. A huge fraction of DwC
> records can be expressed as spreadsheets. Since *all* Simple DwC records
> can be expressed as spreadsheets, many people think
>
> Simple Darwin Core = spreadsheet-expressible Darwin Core
>
> (which isn't true). This means that if they want to express their data as
> a spreadsheet, they think they need to conform to Simple Darwin Core.
>
> The requirement of Simple Darwin Core is that there be no repeated
> elements. But the requirement for spreadsheet-expressible Darwin Core is
> that there be no repeated nested elements. I previously argued
> (http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2011-January/002220.html) in
> favour of using subscripts to represent elements in repeated nests
> (thereby permitting their use in spreadsheets). Even if we don't permit
> that, I'm not sure that the benefits of maintaing a separate Simple Darwin
> Core standard, in addition to the regular Darwin Core standard, are
> greater than the costs in terms of giving people wrong ideas. (I prefer
> the presentation at http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/guides/xml/index.htm,
> where Simple DwC is presented as simply one of several XML schemas for
> Darwin Core.)
>
> I *think* I see the motivation for Simple DwC. Suppose X wants to use
> Darwin Core, but doesn't know much about databases, and just wants to put
> all his data in a spreadsheet. He might not know what a repeated, nested
> data structure is. So it's easiest to just say to him "don't repeat any
> elements, and you'll be fine - your records will be
> spreadsheet-expressible". I agree that that's a benefit. Are there others?
>
> Thanks -
> Joel.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
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>



-- 
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Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Email: pdevries at wisc.edu
TaxonConcept <http://www.taxonconcept.org/>  &
GeoSpecies<http://about.geospecies.org/> Knowledge
Bases
A Semantic Web, Linked Open Data <http://linkeddata.org/>  Project
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