Index Fungorum LSID server

[Roderic Page]

Cool!

A few quick comments re TCS-RDF.

The syntax

     <TaxonNames:hasBasionym>
       <rdf:Description
rdf:about="urn:lsid:indexfungorum.org:Names:148860" />
     </TaxonNames:hasBasionym>

strikes me as odd. If you want to assert a relationship between to
entities, something like

     <TaxonNames:hasBasionym rdf:resource =
"urn:lsid:indexfungorum.org:Names:148860" />

seems appropriate. You are making a link to another entity. Nesting an
rdf:about tag doesn't actually express what we want to say.

I also suggest that urn:lsid:indexfungorum.org:Names:148860 has a
complementary tag such as

     <TaxonNames:isBasionymOf rdf:resource =
"urn:lsid:indexfungorum.org:Names: 213649" />

so we can recover the names for which it is a basionym. Ultimately this
could go in an ontology (i.e., that hasBasionym implies the reverse
isBasionnymOf), but this adds a layer of inference not supported by
triple stores (yet?). If the tags are in the RDF it becomes very easy
to aggregate this information.

The attribute
TaxonNames:nomenclaturalCode="http://tdwg.org/2006/03/12/TaxonNames/
NomenclaturalCode/#botanical" of the tag <TaxonNames:TaxonName> is
problematic. Firstly, I don't know why this is an attribute rather than
just another tag, and the URI
http://tdwg.org/2006/03/12/TaxonNames/NomenclaturalCode/#botanical
returns a 404. If this is just a made up URI then this is bad -- EVERY
URI in an RDF document must be real -- unlike XML schema where any old
rubbish can be used.

     <TaxonNames:publishedIn>&lt;i&gt;Syll. fung.&lt;/i&gt; (Abellini)
&lt;b&gt;1&lt;/b&gt;: 148 (1882) (1882)</TaxonNames:publishedIn>

has formatting information (the <i></i> and <b></b> tags). I think this
is in principle a bad thing(TM) if we can do this in any old tag. We
should separate content and presentation. If we want information that
has formatting, then I think we need to look at what the RSS feed
community has to say about this (of course, they can't quite make up
their mind). Options include the content namespace
(http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/), or using xhtml:body
(see, e.g., http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2003/04/14.html).


Regards

Rod




On 22 Apr 2006, at 01:14, Kevin Richards wrote:

> The IF LSID server now returns TCS-RDF (based on Roger's initial
> implementation) as the metadata and a "full taxonomic name" as the
> data.
>
> Eg try lsidres:urn:lsid:indexfungorum.org:Names:213649 in your browser.
>
> Kevin
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
Professor Roderic D. M. Page
Editor, Systematic Biology
DEEB, IBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QP
United Kingdom

Phone:    +44 141 330 4778
Fax:      +44 141 330 2792
email:    r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
web:      http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html

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