This is a user interface, wrapping programmatic access for the
taxonomyLookupService
semantic web service. The service binds itself to this URL by completing the value of its
sswap:inputURI property (for usage see the protocol discussion
for SSWAP Resource). This is one of the SSWAP
Developer examples.
Enter a common taxon name (such as 'dog', 'cat', or 'barrel medic') or a NCBI taxon ID (such as 3880) to search for the corresponding NCBI taxon record at the
NCBI Taxonomy Database.
On success, a SSWAP-compliant graph is returned with the NCBI taxon URL tagged as a
ncbiTaxa:TaxonomyRecord.
Any data can be tagged this way, creating a semantically rich, unambiguous universal taxonomy tagging system.
If NCBI Taxonomy records are not sufficient for your needs, the ontology can be subclassed and extended, thereby
preserving the properties of the superclass while allowing for specialization with well-defined semantic implications.
See ontologies at the
sswapmeet portal; specifically the
taxa and
NCBITaxonomyRecord ontologies.
Because this is a web front-end to a web service, you will get to see the low level code that the service returns.
The service always returns a SSWAP-compliant, OWL DL graph. If the NCBI lookup fails to find a unique NCBI taxon page,
then the graph used to invoke the service is returned unchanged. This is simply the Resource Description Graph of the
taxonomyLookupService. If a match is found, then the graph is annotated with the new
information of the NCBI taxonomy record.
Reading RDF/XML can be a little obtuse. An easier format to read is N3 (though that is not officially sanctioned by the W3C
as the messaging layer for OWL). To see the graph in N3, copy the source returned from the service and paste it into our
graph format converter reachable from our
Developers' Page. If your browser automatically displays XML in a "convenient" format it may
be hiding data, so 'View Source' or 'View Page Source' first in order to get all the data for a copy/paste.
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