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How do we model the use-of/reference-to a vocabulary item/taxon?
We want to be able to use a vocabulary term (especially for flat vocabularies that are basically enumeration values) in fields of a form (e.g., for the responsible department or person on a Loan). This raises the question of whether, how, and where, we should maintain information that relates the vocabulary to a given entity and/or field. We need such information if we wanted to find all uses of some vocabulary item, across the entire application.
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For now, we will assume that fields can be direct references to a vocabulary value, and that we will solve the search problem as part of the general approach to search and reflection. In addition, we will separately consider the problem of indexing a collection (which builds associations between objects and entries in a vocabulary/authority), which has more in common with the Life Science Determination case, than with the case of a structured reference in an object, to some vocabulary.
Can we model rank as an attribute of a Vocabulary Item?
It seems as though rank is a quality of a vocabulary item, however one of the changes a research might make is to move a taxon within a taxonomy. This raises the question of whether that is still the original taxon in a new rank, or whether it is a new taxon. If it is not intrinsic to the taxon/item, then it has to be part of the relation that links it to others, which is kind of messy.
- In general, I [Patrick] would argue that a taxon is defined by rank as well as name, publication, etc. There are both species and genus taxa for "bufo", for "buteo", etc., so the rank is distinctive, IMO. This simplifies at least one part of the model.
Where do we configure the association of a given vocabulary to a given schema (and UI form) field?
There has been some discussion recently about how and where to configure the information that XSD cannot reasonable express. However, we will need to make a decision (at least for the near term) for how to bind to a vocabulary namespace as the legal range for a given schema field.
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