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Use Case 9
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Use Case 9: Display Concepts Associated With Information (References, Specimens, etc.) Other Than Names (Alternative Query)

Actors

Primary Actor
most likely an individual researcher, ecologist or taxonomist, or anyone (including collection managers and curators) interested in sophisticated ways to explore information stored in the SEEK Taxon database.

Description

This is an alternative entry into the "concept world". In other Use Cases, the typical work flow for a query is (1) "name", (2) "concept", and (3) "related concepts". In this Use Case, taxonomic concepts are queried not through their associated names, but through other information tied to them. A short review of the current version of the SEEK Taxon transfer schema (see TaxonWGConferenceCall_30_July_2003) suggests various additional "keys" to enter the "concept world", e.g. by querying all concepts associated with a particular author ("Stone"), reference ("FNA"), year ("1997"), or (set of) specimen(s) ("CANB 621770-1"). This combination of non-name query vehicles is what the current Use Case covers.

Flow of Events

Pre-conditions

  • The SEEK Taxon database has stored concept information from a variety of sources, and employs an (intelligent) algorithm to achieve the (non-name) information-to-concept matching.

Basic Flow

  1. The Primary Actor initiates a SEEK Taxon database query session, having passed "registry" with SEEK, and having selected one or more preferred views on concepts (i.e. sources of information to be checked for concepts matching the queried information).
  2. Now a query interface appears, containing not only a field for "name", but also various other fields that are part of the information package transferred with each incoming concept, e.g. "reference" and "specimens". This latter kind of information is what the Primary Actor enters to query for matching concepts.
  3. A listing of "short-hands" for complete concept entries is returned, possibly arranged according to probabilistic matching values. The remainder of the Use Case proceeds like other standard queries for concepts associated with names.

Examples

  1. An ecologist, having previously selected the concept for "Cary ovata (Miller) K. Koch" in a treatment of North American walnut and hickory trees by Hardin & Stone 1984, intends to see what other concepts were recognized in that reference. She thus queries the SEEK Taxon database for concepts associated with the reference "Brittonia 36: 140-153 (1984)". A listing of the relevant concept "short-hands" is returned to her and available for further exploration.
  2. A taxonomic expert on hickory trees, having received listings of herbarium specimen codes from various museum collections, wants to see whether any of these specimens (mounted on herbarium sheets) have been inspected in previous treatments of hickories. He thus enters the corresponding specimen codes and receives a listing of matching concepts.

Post-conditions

This Use Case illustrates that an effective, interactive database query can sometimes jump from names to concepts, to references or specimens, then again return to concepts, and so on. A clear and concise labeling of what kinds of information certain concepts contain, might save the user valuable time and avoid exploring concepts with little information content.

Alternative Flows

  • More sophisticates queries can involve combinations of query variables, e.g. (1) name is "Carya", and (2) reference is "FNA 1997".

Further Details

See other Use Cases involving or expanding on queries.

Non-functional Requirements

An algorithm that can achieve probabilistic matching not only on taxonomic name strings, but also (efficiently) on other text strings and/or combinations of these.

Issues

Various on-line services already provide this kind of querying.

History

26 March 2004
(NMF) Use Case created from previous Word document.


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This page last changed on 30-Jun-2004 13:50:33 PDT by LTER.stekell.


This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under award 0225676. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

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