Results

On this page, the results of the project will be documented throughout the project.

Image of the proposed technical structure of ABCD 3

Platform Decision

One of the first tasks in the project was to analyze existing semantic platforms and decide which one will be used to document the semantic concepts for ABCD 3.0. The decision was made to use the TDWG Terms Wiki, which is using MediaWiki with the SemanticMediaWiki Extension. Details of the decision process are documented on the page Platform Decision.

ABCD Documentation

Previously the documentation for the ABCD elements was spread out at various places. These were the outdated TDWG ABCD Wiki, the documentation elements within the XSD Schema files and an internal database used by the BGBM. One of the first project steps was to consolidate these various sources and create a new and coherent place for the ABCD documentation.

Software

Schema Parser

To consolidate the various existing ABCD documentation, the XSD Schema files were parsed to extract the technical documentation as well as other information about the individual elements. This was done using a generic XSD Schema Parser.

Short Name Generator

Previously the only way to identify an ABCD concept was the XPath of the corresponding element in the ABCD XML. This lead to sometimes quite long paths. To better reference the individual concepts, unique and meaningful short names have been created, by which the concepts will be addressed in the future. These short names were generated by a specialized software, which is documented here: Short Name Generator.

ABCD 3.0 Modelling

The following steps for modelling ABCD 3.0 have been done:

• All ABCD 2.06 concepts were imported into a sandbox wikibase instance (https://wiki.bgbm.org/bdidata - Only for development and testing!).
• Concept types and properties to be used within the modelling process were identified.
• The basic ABCD 3.0 graph was created in the wikibase instance.
• A Wikibase Query Interface allows structured queries of the graph and future exports into other formats (e.g. RDF)
• Links between the ABCD 2.06 and new ABCD 3.0 Sandbox concepts were created.
• An RDF Template for the export was created.

More information about the modelling of ABCD 3.0 in the wikibase instance can be found under: https://wiki.bgbm.org/bdidata

Please note that the wikibase instance is only for development and testing and not a final product!