[tdwg-content] Add a Full Example: Re: Public comment on the Darwin Core RDF Guide

Sat Dec 13 17:09:51 CET 2014

Yes it sounds like a good idea, especially if it is convenient and
stable for examples to point back to fragments in the Guide.  When I
read examples of something compliant to a spec or guidance, my most
frequent head scratching starts in the example at a point where I ask
myself "Why the heck are they doing it that way?"  That's when I have
to go back to the authority document, praying that I've landed in the
right place.

On Sat, Dec 13, 2014 at 9:42 AM, Steve Baskauf
<steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
> If the Darwin Core repository is now at Github, then I think that would
> probably be the best home for all of the ancillary documents, including
> examples. Their current location on the RDF Task Group's site is only a
> temporary place for them.  The other alternative is the TDWG website, but we
> have yet to see whether it will become functional again or not.
>
> Perhaps a good strategy would be to create a stable landing page for all of
> the ancillary RDF Guide documents at Github.  Then references in the guide
> can point to that page, rather than to a number of individual pages whose
> URLs might be more likely to change.  Does that sound like a good idea?
>
> Steve
>
>
> John Wieczorek wrote:
>
> At some point we should consider integrating examples in the Darwin Core
> repository (it's new home) on Github (https://github.com/tdwg/dwc). If you
> agree, we should use the new reference in the RDF Guide. I have created an
> issue for this (https://github.com/tdwg/dwc/issues/52).
>
> On Sat, Dec 13, 2014 at 1:49 PM, Steve Baskauf
> <steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Umm.  I don't understand why what you said is relevant. Nobody that I know
>> of has assigned domains to any of the existing Darwin Core terms.  If you
>> have Darwin-SW in mind, it only assigns domains to object properties that it
>> mints and I don't see how that would prevent supporting either or both kinds
>> of use.  The problem in my mind is figuring out how to do queries that would
>> catch both kinds of uses, e.g.
>>
>> SELECT ?Occurrence WHERE {
>>   ?Occurrence dwc:eventDate "2014-12-13"^^xsd:date.
>>   ?Occurrence dwc:locality "Smith Pond".
>>   }
>>
>> which would work for the simple version, but not Darwin-SW.  Obviously,
>> one could easily create a more complex query that would work in simple cases
>> like this example, but the complexity would expand greatly if one wanted to
>> require matches with 3 or more patterns.
>> Steve
>>
>>
>> Bob Morris wrote:
>>
>> Ah, Steve, your examples well illustrate the reason to avoid assigning
>> rdfs:domain, as well as why both are perfectly good illustrations
>> neither of which should be deprecated.  Communities of practice can
>> exploit either or both, and the only communities that are nailed are
>> those that labor under an rdfs:domain for such things as dwc:EventDate
>>
>> Bob
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 10:59 PM, Steve Baskauf
>> <steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Paul,
>> That's exciting that you are trying to generate RDF using real data!
>>
>> I think we initially considered including something in the guide like
>> what you have suggested, but the problem is that what constitutes "an
>> Occurrence record" varies depending on the model one has in mind when
>> serializing the record as RDF.  Historically, "occurrences" were
>> considered to be a superclass that included specimens, and any property
>> remotely related to a specimen could be included as part of an
>> occurrence record.  A provider exposing an occurrence record might give
>> it properties such as dwc:eventDate, dwc:preparations, and
>> dwc:locality.  However, a different provider might consider
>> dwc:eventDate to be the property of a dwc:Event instance,
>> dwc:preparations to be the property of a dwc:PreservedSpecimen, and
>> dwc:locality to be the property of a dcterms:Location instance and link
>> those instances to a separate Occurrence instance via object properties.
>>
>> Which of these is correct?  At this point there is no consensus as to
>> whether one of these approaches is better than the other.  We avoided
>> putting extensive examples within the guide document itself, since the
>> guide will become part of the standard and will probably not be changed
>> frequently, whereas best practices for deciding the types of resources
>> with which properties should be associated is likely to develop over
>> time and with the experience of usage.  For that reason, we have
>> included examples in the ancillary documents that are associated with
>> the guide, but which do not form part of the standard.  The "examples
>> using 'pure' Darwin Core" [1] and "Examples using Darwin-SW object
>> properties" [2] illustrate the extremes that I've described above.
>>
>> Steve
>>
>> [1] https://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/DwcRdfOccurrences
>> [2] https://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/DwcRdfExamplesDarwinSW
>>
>> Paul J. Morris wrote:
>>
>>
>> As I've been working through implementing RDF generation in a few
>> applications and seeking to conform to the guide, I've found myself
>> spending a good bit of time hunting through the document looking for
>> guidance on particular situations, this leads me to a suggestion for
>> the guide: Include, at the end of the guide, a single comprehensive
>> example of an Occurrence record, annotated to point to relevant
>> sections in the guide.  This could serve both to quickly answer
>> questions and as a visual index to the rest of the guide.
>>
>> -Paul
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
>> Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
>>
>> postal mail address:
>> PMB 351634
>> Nashville, TN  37235-1634,  U.S.A.
>>
>> delivery address:
>> 2125 Stevenson Center
>> 1161 21st Ave., S.
>> Nashville, TN 37235
>>
>> office: 2128 Stevenson Center
>> phone: (615) 343-4582,  fax: (615) 322-4942
>> If you fax, please phone or email so that I will know to look for it.
>> http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
>> http://vanderbilt.edu/trees
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
>> Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
>>
>> postal mail address:
>> PMB 351634
>> Nashville, TN  37235-1634,  U.S.A.
>>
>> delivery address:
>> 2125 Stevenson Center
>> 1161 21st Ave., S.
>> Nashville, TN 37235
>>
>> office: 2128 Stevenson Center
>> phone: (615) 343-4582,  fax: (615) 322-4942
>> If you fax, please phone or email so that I will know to look for it.
>> http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
>> http://vanderbilt.edu/trees
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
> Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
>
> postal mail address:
> PMB 351634
> Nashville, TN  37235-1634,  U.S.A.
>
> delivery address:
> 2125 Stevenson Center
> 1161 21st Ave., S.
> Nashville, TN 37235
>
> office: 2128 Stevenson Center
> phone: (615) 343-4582,  fax: (615) 322-4942
> If you fax, please phone or email so that I will know to look for it.
> http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
> http://vanderbilt.edu/trees
>

-- 
Robert A. Morris

Emeritus Professor  of Computer Science
UMASS-Boston
100 Morrissey Blvd
Boston, MA 02125-3390

Filtered Push Project
Harvard University Herbaria
Harvard University

email: morris.bob at gmail.com
web: http://efg.cs.umb.edu/
web: http://wiki.filteredpush.org
       http://wiki.datakurator.net
       http://taxonconceptexplorer.org/
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram