native use of taxonomy module
dan....@humber-edc.org.uk
I've been quiet since the meeting but not ignoring things. I've come
up with a potential scratchpad project and wanted to run it past Simon
and Vince for a sanity check before taking it any further.
We have a project in Yorkshire & Humber to build an application which
can store management activity, status and monitoring data about
designated local sites. This is under a Defra contract and the idea is
not to mandate any particular platform or implementation but rather to
develop the underlying database model and attribution that people can
implement in their own databases if they want.
As I see it one of the key requirements for this database is a common
shared categorisation of management activities, threats, damage
events...
Recently I've been working on a number of projects using JSON AJAX
services to populate controlled vocabularies out of databases, excel
or wherever. This project is a bit different in that we really want to
collaborate to evolve that common vocabulary nationally in any number
of different database implementations.
What I'm wondering is whether I can set up a scratchpad and use the
Drupal taxonomy module to allow a number of users to develop the
various hierarchy elements of that controlled vocabulary.
Then I'd like some way of calling a page from the scratchpad that
would return only the JSON string (or XML or whatever I guess) for a
section of that vocabulary.
I'm hoping that a) Drupal's native taxonomy module can do the first
bit and b) that I'd be allowed in the scratchpad architecture to serve
the kind of non-rendered JSON content to make the taxonomy available
to users implementing the database.
Any thoughts welcome. If this sounds like nonsense let me know too.
Cheers. Dan
Vincent Smith
I'm travelling (or just about to travel) at the moment so this reply
will be short, but the bottom line to your key questions (below) is
"yes". In fact it has already been done under contract with GBIF by us
at the NHM. See http://vocabularies.gbif.org/
> What I'm wondering is whether I can set up a scratchpad and use the Drupal
> taxonomy module to allow a number of users to develop the various hierarchy
> elements of that controlled vocabulary.
I've copied in Kehan Harman who is leading this project. [Can someone
add Kehan to this google groups list - I don't seem to be able to do
it because it won't let me log in with my Google Apps account]. Kehan
is building this site at the NHM, and is jointly funded by GBIF and
us. Its not really a Scratchpad since its its heavily modified for the
specific purpose of building controlled vocabularies, but its all
based in Drupal. Kehan can tell you more. As I understand it, TDWG
will (I think) adopt this as their place to put vocabularies at the
next meeting in November.
> Then I'd like some way of calling a page from the scratchpad that would
> return only the JSON string (or XML or whatever I guess) for a section of
> that vocabulary.
Yes - this is (I think) possible in the context of the vocab site.
Again, Kehan can say more..
> I'm hoping that a) Drupal's native taxonomy module can do the first bit and
> b) that I'd be allowed in the scratchpad architecture to serve the kind of
> non-rendered JSON content to make the taxonomy available to users
> implementing the database.
Yes - this was the reason for choosing Drupal to do this. I'm away
until the 20th and will only have sporadic e-mail access until then,
but Simon is around until the 19th when he goes to visit colleagues at
EOL to make changes to the EOL taxonomy editor. Incidentally Simon's
made a number of changes to the way we handle taxonomy in Drupal 6.
Essentially he's extended taxonomy into nodes, so that we can flexibly
support any kind of metadata associated with a taxonomy term, either
via CCK , or (eventually) through controlled templates for particular
sets of metadata terms, including things like ecological associations.
The purpose of the EOL trip is to make sure this flexibility can be
automatically handled by the EOL editor. Simon can provide more info.
Best,
Vince
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_____________________________________________________________
Dr. Vincent S. Smith
Cybertaxonomist, The Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD, UK
Web: http://vsmith.info/
E-mail: vi...@vsmith.info (preferred)
Tel: +44 (0) 207 942 5127, Fax: +44 (0) 207 942 5661
Skype: vsmithuk; or SkypeIn London: +44 (0)207 558 8950
iChat Video Conferencing: vsmi...@mac.com (invitation only)
_____________________________________________________________
John van Breda
This is an interesting topic to me since just about every system I work on
needs controlled terminologies at its core. A few years ago I worked with
Charles Copp on a thesaurus model which became the BioCASE thesaurus as well
as the thesaurus driving terminology in Luxembourg NHM's collections
management system. The aim was then to provide an ability to store terms and
concepts, attribute facts and metadata to those terms and concepts, and in
particular store information about the relationships between concepts in
both a human readable and machine readable form. It became quite a complex
task in places to allow things like an understanding of broader and narrower
terms, overlapping terms, mutually exclusive but related terms etc. This
leads to fantastic power for both querying and validating a database
content.
Extending the taxonomy module into nodes sounds like a great idea, but as
far as I am aware, the related terms concept is very basic in Drupal and
does not allow you to attribute the type of relationship (though of course I
may be wrong...). If we could do this then I think this would make the
module a lot more useful.
Any thoughts on whether this can be achieved?
Dan, you could also look at this thesaurus model (as it is now embedded in
the Recorder database) for some ideas on your project.
Cheers
John
Charles Roper
2009/10/9 Vincent Smith <vi...@vsmith.info>:
> I've copied in Kehan Harman who is leading this project. [Can someone
> add Kehan to this google groups list - I don't seem to be able to do
> it because it won't let me log in with my Google Apps account].
The group is public and can be joined by anyone here:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/scratchpads
Unfortunately, Google Groups obfuscated Kehan's email address and so I
can't add him directly or email him with further instructions, so if
you could pass on this email to him that would be great.
Charles
Vincent Smith
I'm sure Kehan can add himself.
Best,
Vince
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