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

Tue Oct 31 12:02:46 PST 2006

True enough!

_____________________________
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: seek-taxon-bounces at ecoinformatics.org
[mailto:seek-taxon-bounces at ecoinformatics.org] On Behalf Of Laura L.
Downey
	Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 1:12 PM
	To: 'SEEK Taxon'
	Subject: Re: [seek-taxon] ConceptMapper for SEEK Taxon R.I.P.

	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

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mercury.nceas.ucsb.edu/ecoinformatics/pipermail/seek-taxon/attachments/20061031/701348c6/attachment.htm