aliases

[carueda]

Determine and implement an appropriate way to capture the <alias> entries into the RDF representation.

[graybeal]

Re (1), right now we do not capture the aliases. We can add this capability; the question is whether these should be type Standard_Name with a property indicating they are aliases, or a different type, like Standard_Name_Alias? Because CF considers aliases deprecated, I propose we capture them as a different type (perhaps with a more distinct type name).

With aliases added, we must decide how they should be involved in mappings. There will be a property (replacedByStandardName?) relating the alias to the corresponding Standard_Name, and so an inverse property also. But I don't think the mapping inferences should be made to the aliases; rather, someone who wants to learn about related aliases should find them by explicitly query for aliases that are replaced by the matching standard names).

This whole topic introduces the issue of versioning, because a mapped Standard Name may be turned into an alias in a subsequent version of CF. But I'm not able to think through that quite yet.

[carueda]

For the sake of simplicity (yet, without compromising utility, at least at some basic level), could we just adopt an approach like the following:

• capture those aliases also as :Standard_Name instances linked to their associated names via owl:sameAs properties. We will not need to repeat information, just establish the sameAs association, for example:

:station_description
      owl:sameAs  :platform_name

And we just delegate to the inference engine at hand, either the one at the ORR, but in general, to any others depending on user needs, the exploitation of the entailments based on the sameAs semantics.

Advantages:

• simple to implement from our side
• we put the actual burden on users that for some reason are linking to the aliases (which are BTW already declared "deprecated")
• if a "primary" name gets declared "alias" (that is, deprecated), we will not need to do anything because we are not making any distinction in the RDF representation.

[graybeal]

I thought about that, it is appealing in some ways. Yet I think it breaks the presumption of many users, namely that we are presenting the authentic list of approved CF standard names. Using that approach, a query for standard names will return all sorts of names that are, in fact, deprecated. (Yes, it will be obvious in some ways that they are not 'complete', but I think any implication that they are real standard_names is not good. I mean, the NVS makes them into a wholly separate list, If I Am Not Mistaken.)

[carueda]

Good point. One next simple approach: introduce a :hasAlias property for the associated alias strings. Those aliases won't have direct URIs for eventual self-resolvability, but this would perhaps be just fine (besides, given an alias (string), the corresponding info can still be retrieved via query.)

[carueda]

This is the response for the alias surface_temperature_where_land from NVS , which is captured in http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/P07/current/CFSN0227/ :

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="/VocabV2/Concept2Html.xsl" type="text/xsl" media="screen"?>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:dce="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:owl="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#" xmlns:skos="http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#" xmlns:void="http://rdfs.org/ns/void#">

    <skos:Concept rdf:about="http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/P07/current/CFSN0227/">

        <skos:prefLabel xml:lang="en">surface_temperature_where_land</skos:prefLabel>

        <skos:altLabel/>

        <skos:definition xml:lang="en">Unless indicated, a quantity is assumed to apply to the whole area of each horizontal grid box. The qualifier where_type specifies instead that the quantity applies only to the part of the grid box of the named type. The surface temperature is the (skin) temperature at the interface, not the bulk temperature of the medium above or below.</skos:definition>

        <dc:identifier>SDN:P07::CFSN0227</dc:identifier>

        <dce:identifier>SDN:P07::CFSN0227</dce:identifier>

        <skos:notation>SDN:P07::CFSN0227</skos:notation>

        <owl:versionInfo>1</owl:versionInfo>

        <dc:date>2008-11-11 15:25:45.0</dc:date>

        <skos:note xml:lang="en">deprecated</skos:note>

        <owl:deprecated>true</owl:deprecated>

        <dc:isReplacedBy rdf:resource="http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/P07/current/CFSN0225/"/>

        <skos:broader rdf:resource="http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/P02/current/CDTA/"/>

        <skos:broader rdf:resource="http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/P04/current/G230/"/>

        <skos:broader rdf:resource="http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/P07/current/CFSN0225/"/>

        <owl:sameAs rdf:resource="http://mmisw.org/ont/cf/parameter/surface_temperature_where_land"/>

        <skos:broader rdf:resource="http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/P64/current/G230/"/>

        <void:inDataset rdf:resource="http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/.well-known/void"/>

    </skos:Concept>

</rdf:RDF>

(BTW, note they are already mapping to the alias terms at the ORR although not yet captured there.)