Identifiers & Relationships

Joe Hourcle, Solar Data Analysis Center, Goodard

At a recent meeting, I came to realize that there are quite a few people who have more recently come into the field of data informatics, and have missed out on much of the discussions over the last decade on data identifiers. In the last few weeks two papers were published by some of the same co-authors that took a contrary position on the presentation of identifiers, although that was not a focus on either of the papers.

I will give an overview of some of the issues regarding identifiers for data (both those that I think are resolved and not), the need for vocabulary and standards to describe what is being identified, and the implications for data citation and describing other data relationships.

Bio:

Joe Hourcle is (as of the time this was written) a programmer/analyst for the Solar Data Analysis Center at Goddard Space Flight Center, working as a programmer / DBA / sysadmin / cataloger / whatever else on the Virtual Solar Observatory. He has an interest in classifying things and naming concepts – he has been working with Todd King on a (still unpublished) vocabulary to discuss data systems (http://virtualsolar.org/vocab), and back before he knew anything about ontologies & controlled vocabularies, added the topics to fark.com. He would also like to remind you that the crew neck means that most t-shirts qualify as a ‘shirt with a collar’.