[PyWrapper-devel] Behold RDF is born unto us!

[Roger H. <ro...@td...>]

Happy New Year everyone.

If you have a local pywrapper and have connected the training  
datasource up to a database then you should be able to run this query  
(long URL) perhaps with minor tweaks to the port etc.

http://localhost:8080/pywrapper/pywrapper? 
dsa=training&op=search&envelope=false&model=http://rs.tdwg.org/ 
ontology/voc/tapir/outputmodel/TaxonName_001.xml&filter=UnitID@abcd206 
+like+"2422"

What you will get back is (but for one minor minor thing) valid RDF!

After Markus' fix (and after Christmas) I turned to making a real- 
life output model and it is actually quite simple once you have the  
framework in place.

This is still a fairly trivial example but it shows that it is  
possible and I'll continue to build on it up to the workshop.

**WARNING** I am using the identifications table in the training dsa  
as if it contained pure nomenclatural data just because I have the  
TaxonName vocabulary to hand. This is not how the vocabulary should  
or will be used. It is just a test thing. I'll now try and do some  
more sensible things.

The fun part is that I use the mapped ABCD concepts in my output  
model. So we are creating RDF from a datasource that was never  
intended to supply it :) Not sure how possible this will be in real  
life for retrofitting data suppliers who haven't done the mappings to  
the central concepts but is a possibility.

I have one question about Concept Name Servers. It would make sense  
to have a CNS for the TDWG ontology. We could then define the RDF  
generating models and some query templates in it along with their  
associated concepts. We would need some convention to prevent name  
clashes with the alias'.

Can anyone see a problem with this? Will PyWrapper pick up multiple  
CNS and load them all? Has this been tested?

The mapping is fun here because the TAPIR concepts map to db concepts  
through the regular mechanisms but are also mapped, via the namespace  
conventions in the RDF to more general meanings.

I also have a request. If you take the result of running the above  
(it looks like this)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>


<RDF xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#'>
   <TaxonName xmlns='http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/TaxonName#'  
about='2422'>
     <title xmlns='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/'>Calicium  
adspersum Pers. subsp. australe Tibell</title>
     <genusPart>Calicium</genusPart>
     <specificEpithet>adspersum</specificEpithet>
     <infraspecificEpithet>australe</infraspecificEpithet>
   </TaxonName>
</RDF>

and cut and paste it into the W3C RDF validator (http://www.w3.org/ 
RDF/Validator/) you get a single deprecated warning.

Error: {W102} unqualified use of rdf:about is deprecated.[Line = 5,  
Column = 78]

It seems that PyWrapper isn't putting the namespace in for the  
attribute in the output. I have not looked into it in detail but it  
is specified in the model and other namespace stuff is followed so I  
guess it is a bug (this is the minor minor thing that will come to  
bite us when we need rdf:resource references going).

Could someone with their hands on the code (sorry is that you  
Markus!) look at this one. Then I think we will be really RDF  
compatible.

Many thanks,

All the best,

Roger


****************************************
   Roger Hyam <ro...@td...>
   Biodiversity Information Standards
****************************************