[tdwg-content] delimiter characters for concatenated IDs

Hilmar Lapp hlapp at nescent.org
Mon May 5 16:46:50 CEST 2014


I couldn't agree more.

I would also ask why there still isn't a global resolver as a web-service
that takes specimen metadata as input (such as the DwC triplet) and returns
globally unique resolvable identifiers, minting them if necessary. If the
technologically savvy people of this community came together, this could be
built at least as a prototype in a couple of days. As I've suggested to
iDigBio before, they could hold a hackathon on this, commit to hosting and
further developing the outcome, and the problem would be solved once and
for all. It would arguably be fully within their mandate.

If instead of the many workshops that have been held on talking about the
problem we as a community would finally will ourselves to actually solving
it, that part really isn't so difficult.

  -hilmar


On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 10:23 AM, Robert Guralnick <
Robert.Guralnick at colorado.edu> wrote:

>
>   We've been examining the use (ad mis-use) of the DwC triplet, and how
> that propagates out of local portals and platforms into other ones.   The
> end message from this work (and I am happy to share the manuscript and all
> the datasets we have compiled and examined) is that it is a _terrible_
> choice for a global unique identifier.
>
>    There are so many better choices, that don't rely on delimiters or on
> what is ultimately a non-globally unique, non persistent,  non resolvable
> choice for a (permanent, resolvable, globally unique) identifier.  As
> opposed to having this conversation, I wonder why we aren't having one
> about ALL the other more rational choices...
>
> Best, Rob
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 8:14 AM, Chuck Miller <Chuck.Miller at mobot.org>wrote:
>
>> Markus,
>>
>> Didn’t we reach a general consensus within the last couple of years that
>> the vertical pipe (|) was the preferred concatenation symbol?
>>
>>
>>
>> Chuck
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org [mailto:
>> tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org] *On Behalf Of *Markus Döring
>> *Sent:* Monday, May 05, 2014 8:49 AM
>> *To:* "Dröge, Gabriele"
>> *Cc:* tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
>> *Subject:* Re: [tdwg-content] delimiter characters for concatenated IDs
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi Gabi,
>>
>> can you explain a little more what you are trying to do giving an example
>> maybe?
>>
>>
>>
>> It appears to me you are creating (globally) unique identifiers on the
>> basis of various existing fields which is fine. But when you use the
>> identifier to create resource relations they should be considered opaque
>> and you should not need to parse out the underlying pieces again. So in
>> that scenario the character used to concatenate the triplet does not really
>> matter for the end user as long as its unique and points to some existing
>> resource, indicated by the occurrenceID in case of occurrences or the
>> materialSampleID for samples.
>>
>>
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Markus
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 05 May 2014, at 15:24, Dröge, Gabriele <g.droege at BGBM.ORG> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>>
>>
>> I guess there might have been some discussions about proper delimiter
>> characters in the past that I have missed.
>>
>>
>>
>> In several projects, first of all in GGBN (Global Genome Biodiversity
>> Network, http://www.ggbn.org), there is a need for making a decision
>> now. We need to reference between different records and databases and
>> within Darwin Core we want to use the relatedResourceID to do so.
>>
>>
>>
>> During our GGBN workshop at TDWG last year we agreed on concatenating the
>> traditional triple ID (Catalogue Number, Collection Code, Institution Code)
>> and add further parameters if required too (e.g. GUID, access point). We
>> have checked those parameters and can definitely not use a single character
>> as delimiter.
>>
>>
>>
>> So my question to you is, if there are already some suggestions on using
>> two characters together as delimiters. It would be great if we could find a
>> solution more than one community could agree on.
>>
>>
>>
>> Otherwise I would like to open the discussion and suggest "\\", "||",
>> "\|", "§|", "§§", or "\§".
>>
>>
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Gabi
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Gabriele Droege
>>
>> Coordinator - DNA Bank Network
>>
>> Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN)
>>
>> Berlin-Dahlem DNA Bank
>>
>> Women's Officer ZE BGBM
>>
>>
>>
>> Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem
>>
>> Freie Universität Berlin
>>
>> Koenigin-Luise-Str. 6-8
>>
>> 14195 Berlin
>>
>> Germany
>>
>>
>>
>> +49 30 838 50 139
>>
>>
>>
>> www.dnabank-network.org
>>
>> www.ggbn.org
>>
>> www.bgbm.org
>>
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>>
>>
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>
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-- 
Hilmar Lapp -:- informatics.nescent.org/wiki -:- lappland.io
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