[Tcs-lc] Taxonomic order anyone?

[Sally Hinchcliffe]

Gregor wrote:
> 
> However, if you want to express sequence I believe it is  sufficient to agree 
> that the order of elements in the instance document must be preserved and is 
> semantic. I would not like to load all data exchange with this agreement, 
> however, since it is a severe burden on many potential uses of name or concept 
> data. So if data go from original provider through several processes in a 
> chain, I believe it would be unwise to require all of them to preserve order.
> 
Is there nothing in the UBIF metadata stuff that could indicate a 
sort order? For instance if IPNI presents data in any order at all, 
it would be alphabetical. Or it might be unordered, and I'd hate for 
anyone to read into that some sort of taxonomic order. Or we might 
want to order names in the order they were published ... so the 
attribute for the data set as a whole could be something like: 
unordered, alphabetically by name, taxonomic order, date order etc. 
etc.  - would we be able to come up with an exhaustive list?
Sally


> (Unfortunately, w3c schema really lacks any mechanism to express this. RDF has 
> seq, set, and bag types for this, but to me - as biologist - it seems more 
> appropriate as part of the schema).
> 
> Gregor----------------------------------------------------------
> Gregor Hagedorn (G.Hagedorn at bba.de)
> Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biosafety
> Federal Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA)
> Königin-Luise-Str. 19           Tel: +49-30-8304-2220
> 14195 Berlin, Germany           Fax: +49-30-8304-2203
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Tcs-lc mailing list
> Tcs-lc at ecoinformatics.org
> http://mercury.nceas.ucsb.edu/ecoinformatics/mailman/listinfo/tcs-lc

*** Sally Hinchcliffe
*** Computer section, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
*** tel: +44 (0)20 8332 5708
*** S.Hinchcliffe at rbgkew.org.uk