Taxon WG Conference Call_18_June_2003

18 June 2003 taxon WG Teleconference

• Present: Gales, Stewart, Beach, Vieglais, Kennedy, Jones, Huddleston,
• Excused: Peet
• MIA: Gauch

The other 50% KU Taxon Programmer might be associated with the SMS group. Dave Thau might be interested in working as a consultant on this. Willing to do exploratory, programming. Jim contact Bertram about this.

http://dev.nceas.ucsb.edu/taxon-cgi/index.cgi
http://www.kreditkarten-tipp.de
http://www.fastenwandern-heppner.de
http://www.kaufsonline.de
http://www.badado.de

Aimee reviewed the demo at the above URL.

Discussion of Source of EML records for species occurence data. Matt will post LTER northern temperate lakes source of EML records.

Question of whether to put concept data into an XML database - it depends on the complexity of the schema, also might be useful if the schema is going to change a bunch.

MJ: using EML for occurence data, the EML record will be at the taxon level, does the taxonomic coverage of a data et include this taxon?
then the base data set will have different kind of uses of the taxon data, it may have qualifiers, details of the occurence, presence, absence, freequency, etc. you will need to parse the data set to actually use the data. EML only tells you that something is there in the data set for a particular taxon coverage. The base data may be biomass values, e.g., that may need to be transformed into occurence and abundance for certain uses. Understanding the structure of n data sets each with individual EML records for each is a daunting task. Not the responsibility of the Taxon WG per se--to understand the transformations needed on base data. Objective #8 has a strong reliance on the EML record, but that will not have all the information one will need to use the base data.

JK: We have an opportunity to hold a workshop in Edinburgh, with the E-science Center support, 3 Days, Day 1: tutorials on classifications, ontologies, metadata, vizualization stuff, etc. Day 2: discussing the application development and design issues with SEEK. Produce a report on what needs to be done to move forward. E-Science folks would pay for five people, do the web site support, logistics support. Should we do this to accompany a SEEK meeting in Edinburgh? April or May would be the earliest. Would include tutorials and workshops.

MJ: We have an annual meeting in Santa Barbara in October 22-26, 2003. Training EOT meeting in January, May 5 day all-hands, development group, May 10-14 (including travel days as it now stands, so only 3 days on the ground as it now stands). Not sure there is travel money in SEEK to move everyone to Scotland for the meeting.

MJ: Need some guidance from Bill and SEEK-EXEC for the WG on travel budgets. Should all of the SEEK project meet there, or just some of the working groups? Taxon, Ecogrid, SMS, maybe a SEEK subset.

JK: needs to define the schema that different providers can use to be able to provide data. JK needs to work with Dave to define the interfaces for that. Also wants to talk with Matt about EML.

RG: working on the api for the name/taxon data provider service, input and output schema,

FROM THE MAY 13 TAXON WG MEETING NOTES: ==== TWG Development Tasks to enable the Fringed Filefish Concept Retrieval Demonstration with the SEEK architecture. ====

Add Concepts to the Concept Database

1. Define Concept Schema (PH: has ITIS US Schema for this in CVS, BP e-mailed draft schema 5/15/03, TDWG-Berendsohn-ABCD schema, vegbank model.) DRAFT XML schema to represent a taxonomic concept (DV) (JK will complete her survey to complete the metamodel) 2. Create Tools to populate (grab data from ITIS, AS/KU) 3. Policies to control population (postponed to later) 4. Match User Query Taxonomic Criteria to Concepts in Database 3. Define User Query Schema (may be extended beyond ecogrid generic schema, Susan based on concept schema) 4. Create/Test Initial Matching Algorithm (AS consulting with SG, JK)) 5. Define API (DV)(Dave Vieglais has notes for services in a CVS document taxonservice.txt: http://cvs.ecoinformatics.org/cvs/cvsweb.cgi/~checkout~/seek/projects/taxon/docs/taxonservice.html ) 6. Define Site (Occurence data sets) Taxonomic Schema in EML and we will hack the mapping to the internal SEEK schema as a first cut, then we decide whether to modify EML or make a SEEK EML in the future to fix the mapping mismatches. What are the first resources to markup, (a) someone should contact BEAM about which data sets we should use for this emonstration, Bill M queried the modelers for this information (JB will contact Michener) 7. Create Tools to Populate Site MetaData Cache AS 8. Create/Test Initial Matching Algorithm AS with SG, JK) 9. Define API (DV) 9. Determine timing and take action on othe 50% KU TWG Programmer

Task Schedule
Date - Task

May 26  - 1a strawman 
June 2  - 2 draft, 6
June 9  - 10
June 16 - 1b, draft
June 18 Wednesday - conference call, 10AM US CDT
June 23 - 3+6; 5+9 draft
June 30 - NSF reporting deadline for previous year 
July 7  - 2 final
July 14 - 7 final
July 16 - Wednesday - conference call 10AM US CDT
July 21 - 
July 28 - 4+8 initial