Hi John,
My understanding of Standard Name 'aliases' is that they provide a deprecation mechanism. Until the last batch of updates the relationship between the 'old' and 'new' was exactMatch, but this changed significantly in the last update with many of the 'replacements' being obviously semantically broader than their predecessors.
Since discussions with Alison at GO-ESSP I'm serving the standard names in a manner to reflect this with a list for current names (P071) and another for deprecates (P072). Obviously, there's a mapping maintained between them.
As you are intimating and others have requested, it would be good to have an internal mapping between related Standard Names and there's an action from GO-ESSP on Alison and I to do this. At the moment I'm hoping Alison can find time to do the mapping then I'll load them, but appreciate that she's many other things to do.
So, an idea occurred to me. If anyone reading the list would like to propose any internal mappings based on exactMatch, broadMatch and narrowMatch and send them to me then I'll load them up. To avoid duplication of effort it might be best for any volunteers to post a message to the list stating the area of the Standard Name domain they're proposing to take on.
Looking into my crystal ball it might be possible for these mappings to be maintained directly by the CF community using a VINE-like interface linked to the Vocabulary Server term repository.
Cheers, Roy.
>>> John Graybeal <graybeal at mbari.org> 11/26/08 4:16 PM >>>
This seems a little artificially constrained -- make the change for a
day, then change it back, and presto, now the alias is recording a
previous version of a standard name.
But I guess that doesn't address your main point, which is that
aliases aren't intended to serve as synonyms/navigational aids. Not
knowing the history, I wonder: Is that conclusion open to discussion?
Seems like a useful capability.
john
On Nov 26, 2008, at 6:30 AM, Pamment, JA (Alison) wrote:
> Unfortunately, it would not be possible to do this because aliases
> in CF
> are used only as a way of recording previous versions of existing
> standard names, for example, when a name is changed for reasons of
> clarity or to correct a spelling mistake. It is not intended to be
> used
> as a means of creating synonyms between current names or as a
> navigation
> aid to the standard name table. If we changed the name to
> mass_fraction_of_water_vapor_in_dry_air then humidity_mixing_ratio
> would
> become its alias, but we couldn't do it the other way round.
--------------
John Graybeal <mailto:graybeal at mbari.org> -- 831-775-1956
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Marine Metadata Interoperability Project:
http://marinemetadata.org
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Received on Wed Nov 26 2008 - 09:37:06 GMT
