UBIF_CoreOntology.xsd schema file overview

(Version: Unified Biosciences Information Framework (UBIF) 1.1)

TDWG working group: Structure of Descriptive Data (SDD)

Introduction

This document gives an overview of the schema components present in a single schema file, similar to the entry view provided by graphical schema editors. It documents only the root level annotations and components (elements, global attributes, simple and complex types, and groups). The definition of the components listed here is documented separately (hyperlinking could not yet be implemented).

Because the UBIF schema is designed as a type library, complex types represent class definitions and most schema files contain only a single root-level element.

Please see the schema documentation resource directory for schema overviews of other files and detailed component documentation.


Schema file content

The following content is generated automatically from the documentation inside the schema file:

Unified Biosciences Information Framework (UBIF) XML schema. This schema provides a core ontology of first class object types and references derived from the common abstract base type.

Copyright © 2006 TDWG (Taxonomic Databases Working Group, www.tdwg.org). See the file UBIF_(c).xsd for authorship and licensing information.

Includes: UBIF_BasePattern.xsd


Fundamental UBIF object types derived from the abstract type defined in UBIF object pattern (these already use elements from the core ontology!):


The core ontology itself:


Taxon names (includes taxon in the biological as well as a more general sense):


Taxon class hierarchy (biology: taxon concepts):


Specimens ('Unit' in ABCD, 'Object' in earlier versions of UBIF/SDD):


Publications, references, and citations:

The following types build on the Publication infrastructure:


Media (especially images, audio/video, but potentially also complex objects like html with images, pdf, etc.):

MediaObjectRef: In contrast to most reference types MediaObject references have already been defined in the abstract BasePattern schema, they are used in the base types Representation component.


Geography:

GeographicAreaRef: In contrast to most reference types GeographicArea references have already been defined in the abstract BasePattern schema, they are used in the base event type.


Agents (persons, organization, software agent):

The following types build on the Agent infrastructure:


Statements are a special form of complex text expressions

Note: A modeling problem is that in instance documents Agents within a role are usually ordered (sequence), but different roles not (authors+editors = editors+authors). UBIF 1.0 until beta 14 (available on WIKI!), attempted to solve the problem by introducing a 2-layer collection with Creators/AgentRole[@role='aut']/Agent[@ref]. This has now been abandoned to reduce complexity.

types related to Agent references:

(About group above (do not place this in group-annotation, to avoid displaying whenever group is used): An optional RevisionData element provided as a group to simplify reuse (esp. where restrictions are being used).)


Audience definitions

(AudienceIdentifier is defined in UBIF_ObjectTypePattern because audience is already used in the labels of the fundamental object type.)

(Note: It would be possible to remodel all object types using the same restriction plus extension in two steps. Using type-specific instance identifiers may be desirable when mapping the schema to programming languages. However, for the first release of UBIF this has ONLY been done here!)


(Generated on 23. May 2006 by DiversitySchemaTools Version 0.5. Copyright (c) G. Hagedorn 2006.)