[seek-taxon] ConceptMapper for SEEK Taxon R.I.P.

Tue Oct 31 11:12:29 PST 2006

Hmmm. well we did learn some valuable information from a user perspective on
expectations of a UI application for concept mapping purposes so we have
that information to apply if we go forward with another "concept mapping"
application that has the data structure and import/export issues ironed out.

Laura L. Downey
Senior Usability Engineer
LTER Network Office
Department of Biology, MSC03 2020
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM  87131-0001
505.277.3157 office

505.610.9657 mobile

505.277-2541 fax
ldowney at lternet.edu

  _____  

From: seek-taxon-bounces at ecoinformatics.org
[mailto:seek-taxon-bounces at ecoinformatics.org] On Behalf Of Beach, James H
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 10:22 AM
To: SEEK Taxon
Subject: [seek-taxon] ConceptMapper for SEEK Taxon R.I.P.

I regret to report that ConceptMapper software is unusable for any SEEK
Taxon purposes related to TCS or the TOS.  We suspected this earlier but
Aimee has pretty much put the nail in the coffin, here on Halloween. The
good news is that it is usable for Bob's concept mapping work as evidenced
by his recent success with (What was it?) 100,000? mapped plant concepts.

We are back to square one about a UI application to enable end users or
people with a TCS-level of awareness of concepts, to enter data into TOS or
to author TCS docs.  Our bat taxonomist, Heather York, will be using a
spreadsheet.  Despite having data for bats for MSW 93 and 05 in the TOS, we
have no application that supports that mapping between them, we'll need to
find another way.  Aimee and I will be thinking about it.

Jim B.

_____________________________
James H. Beach
Biodiversity Research Center
University of Kansas
1345 Jayhawk Boulevard
Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
T 785 864-4645, F 785 864-5335

  _____  

From: Stewart, Aimee Marian 
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 9:54 AM
To: Beach, James H
Subject: ConceptMapper for Bat project

Hi Jim,

Last week I started a How-To document for the bat project using the most
recent version of ConceptMapper (18 Oct 2006).  I ran into some severe
problems with the application's interpretation of a simple (7 concept, 11
relationships) test dataset.  There are some other issues with ConceptMapper
that make it difficult to use though they do not necessarily corrupt the
data.  These may be issues that Laura addressed, but have not yet been
incorporated into the application.

In short, Taxonomic Concepts in ConceptMapper do not match any version of
TCS.  The differences are not merely a simplification of TCS structure, they
change or ignore some basic simple versions of objects.  I don't think that
this application in its present form will work for creating and/or relating
concept data.  Here are some of the problems that led to that conclusion:

Import Data:

   1. Data is imported inconsistently
         1. AccordingTo's on Concepts are imported as Publications, called
References in some places, AccordingTo in other places
         2. Those Publication/AccordingTo/Reference items are imported
differently depending on items that occur near them
         3. Publications are not imported
         4. Of the 11 External Relationships (RelationshipAssertions), only
2 were imported
         5. One of the Internal relationships was imported as an External
relationship
         6. AccordingTos, Specimens, Institutions, Collections, and
SpecimenItems all have a required field that, when imported, is overwritten
by the application
   2. Taxon Names - Only the simple string is imported, all other data is
ignored/lost (Publication, CanonicalName, CanonicalAuthorship, Rank,
Typification, etc)

Export Data:

   1. Obviously, data ignored or interpreted incorrectly during import is
lost or exported incorrectly
   2. Export file is not well-formed (parseable) for included dataset
   3. Export file for small test dataset (7 concepts) is well-formed, but
data is incorrect
   4. Required fields for some objects are generated by the application -
replacing those fields that were originally in the imported data

Add Data:

   1. Can only add a single Specimen - error on additional specimens
   2. AccordingTos, Specimens, Institutions, Collections, and SpecimenItems
all have a required field that cannot be added and does not appear in the
application.  The required fields are generated by the application -
inappropriate for a simple string
   3. External relationships (RelationshipAssertions):
         1. Zero of the hierarchical realtionships can be added
         2. Only 5 of the 18 non-hierarchical relationship types can be
added
   4. Internal relationships (within a concept):
         1. Only 1 of the 6 hierarchical internal relationships can be added
         2. Zero of the non-hierarchical relationships can be added
   5. "Synonyms" can be added to a concept, but they are just a single
string - this is not a part of TCS

Aimee

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