[Tcs-lc] Progress on TCS/LC

Kennedy, Jessie J.Kennedy at napier.ac.uk
Wed Mar 30 07:04:56 PST 2005


> Dear All
> 
> Further to my email announcing TCS for voting and my question as to whether or not we should be trying to design a schema to suit all purposes or have different schemas - I can't say I really know what you all think about this and am reluctant to even suggest that I might know ;-)
> However, thanks to Rich for encouraging people to consider the question, to Gregor and Greg for their thoughts on the matter, to Roger for remotivating us and to everyone else for their continuing contributions on the issues.
> 
> The main issue which is one that we have chopped and changed our minds during the development of the TCS is whether or not it is more appropriate that names be modelled as objects in their own right or be treated as (parts of) concepts as we proposed in NZ. We have heard many arguments for and against both approaches and I believe that through the discussions there is now a better understanding of some of the requirements of the TCS. But it is difficult to know how generally the views are held as most people don't have the time that is required to consider all the implications of any schema proposed. It is also difficult to ensure that all issues have been considered and it is very tempting at times to be convinced that "this one" is the solution but usually someone finds a problem. It also seems to be clear that people think that there are many ways to model the information and whatever way we go I'm sure that someone will feel they cannot express what they need to be able to. 
> 
> So from the discussions we have come to the following conclusions
> *	Many people believe that names are objects in their own right and won't be satisfied unless they can have that. Names must be seen as different and separate things from concepts.
> *	Treating names as views (subset of the TaxonConcept element) on original concepts does not seem to be an acceptable approach.
> *	Nominal concepts (concepts with names but no definition) were a good mechanism for dealing with legacy data where "identifications" were marked up as names where they should be concepts. 
> *	People wanted the schema to be less ambiguous - more precise definitions of elements and relationship types. Rules should be followed.
> *	References should be elaborated to include a simple textual representation of the target and cater for various types of identifiers. 
> 
> As a result we have decided to put together a version of the schema with names as top level objects and we have started work on (and continue) this with Roger. Hopefully this will allow the schema to progress to version 1 for voting more quickly. This schema will allow those interested in names only to transfer names. Names will only have a short list of specified relationships that will be allowed between them, those explicitly mentioned in LC. Concepts will refer to Names but otherwise not really be different.  Anywhere that names currently use relationships which are not purely nomenclatural will require a concept to be created to allow these relationships to be specified. 
> 
> Roger and Robert will make some final adjustments to this version and then Roger will create instance documents to support the schema so please be patient and wait until this is available for comment. Hopefully Roger's instance documents and documentation  in creating these will help everyone understand how their data would be mapped to the TCS and we can then see if this is acceptable to all.
> 
> We would really like to see TCS get to version 1 and hopefully accepted as a TDWG standard and I appreciate all the work everyone is putting into this even though it is hard going at times .
> 
> Jessie
> 
> Prof. Jessie B Kennedy
> School of Computing
> Napier University
> Merchiston Campus
> 10 Colinton Road	tel:	+44 (0)131-455-2772
> Edinburgh		fax:   	+44 (0)131-455-2727
> EH10 5DT		mobile:> 	07974948703
> Scotland		email: j.kennedy at napier.ac.uk
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

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