Infering Which Taxon Call To Make

Dave,

I have an observation. One of the reasons we're working on this prototype is to have a better idea of how the SMS and Taxon interfaces should be designed so that the two can play together.

I think we have found one place where SMS needs to call Taxon: in converting common names to concept GUIDs. In particular, in the registration mapping, we want to be able to say "use taxon to resolve this name to an authoritative instance".

It would look something like this in the semantic registration:

register {
    dataset: {antweb:040412},
    semview: {...},
    semvals: {
       map [genus] using taxonServerCommonNameGenus2GUID,
       map [species] using taxonServerCommonNameSpecies2GUID
    }
}

Where the thing after the "using" is the service to call to do the mapping. For example, the first would take a string representing a common name for a genus and return a GUID for the corresponding concept.

Of course, just by virtue of the semview, we can infer this function. In particular, this def in the semview:

   'genus' = 'Genus' as $g object {
     'rankName' = 'LocalString' object {
       'dataValue' = $t/genus
     },
     ...
   }

says that the genus object has a rank name represented as a string value. Therefore, since the rankName is not given as a GUID, and instead is given as a string value (we might want to state further in the onto that it isn't just a string, but a common name), that SMS should attempt to resolve the given name to the corresponding authoritative GUID. To do this, SMS would know to call the correct taxon service that handles the mapping, in this case, taxonServerCommonNameGenus2GUID. (I hope there is a better, shorter name for that service :)

Shawn