Two kinds of GUIDs?

[Richard Pyle]

Yde,

I fully agree with everything in your post (below), with the caveat that the
process of cross-mapping will be DRAMATICALLY more straightforward if we
address the 'what's in the name' issue early.

Aloha,
Rich

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Taxonomic Databases Working Group GUID Project
> [mailto:TDWG-GUID at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU]On Behalf Of Yde de Jong
> Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 12:56 AM
> To: TDWG-GUID at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU
> Subject: Two kinds of GUIDs?
>
>
> Dear all,
>
> Considering the last messages.
>
> In my understanding (sorry for repeating part of your input) we can
> distinguish two kinds of GUIDs:
>
> (1) Universal GUIDs like the ISBN numbers of publications and the
> GeneBank codes of sequences.
>
> (2) Local GUIDs, which are uniquely linked to objects in your (local)
> database, however, which metadata and metadata structure is
> standardised (in our case by GBIF).
>
> The Universal GUIDs we need for unambiguous cross-linking of
> databases, because we can't match databases efficiently otherwise
> (e.g. semantically). Indeed in the future everyone should add a
> column to its taxon table and cross-reference to a universal GUIDs
> system (=nomenclator) which keep the standard GUIDs for each name
> (let's leave 'what's in the name' for the moment).
>
> For me its clear that there is a difference between the use of a name
> within a concept and the name itself. Such a universal GUIDs system
> doesn't need to deal with the use of names and therefore not with
> concepts. Actually names within a nomenclator should never change,
> only the content should grow through time (like sequence data in
> GeneBank).
>
> Local GUIDs are important for GBIF to show the origin of data. This
> is essential not only for a proper acknowledgement, but also to
> identify possible duplications (e.g. Fauna Europaea data sets are
> being implemented in many other databases, GBIF needs to have a tool
> to detect such duplications).
>
> In addition those local GUIDs can be used, when cross-mapped with
> universal GUIDs, to provide concepts for the GBIF portal in a
> workable way. Meaning that a GBIF portal user can chose which species
> concept (e.g. that of the CoL) he/she would like to use for
> connecting the requested biodiversity data.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Yde