Task #337
closedVegBIEN table renames
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Description
E-mail from Brad:
Conceptual definitions of tables:
observation: permanent attributes of a unit or area of observation, in particular geographic location. Can be areas or points. Contains one or more observationEvents.
observationEvent: a single sampling event at a particular place (observation) and time. Contains one or more taxonOccurrences.
observationMethod: set of methods used to make a taxonObservation. Can also be applied to entire observations (plot or subplot) or observationEvents. Unites criteria of size classe, growth form, strata, and sampling area used to include the taxonObservations (and hence to exclude others). We should consider having more method lookup tables linked to observationMethod (growth form criteria, for example), or take a more ontological approach and use sets of generic rules such as `inclusionCriterionName`, `inclusionCriterion`, `inclusionCriterionUnits`, etc. Let me know if you think this is already adequately modeled by current VegBIEN schema.
Updated by Aaron Marcuse-Kubitza over 12 years ago
"observation" can be confusing, because it's not obvious what it's an observation of (a plot, an organism, a stem?). Are you sure we want to rename location to observation? Also, an observation sounds like an event, but we're using it for an area (location).
Updated by Aaron Marcuse-Kubitza over 12 years ago
- Status changed from New to Closed
E-mail from Brad on 2012-1-20:
Hi Mike,
You and Aaron have convinced me. Bob & I were advocating a return to the "observation" during our meeting yesterday, and I made that change in a list of schema changes I sent out afterward (which you haven't seen yet). Aaron has rightly pointed out that 'observation' is confusing. In my own databases, I tend to reserve 'observation' for what we are here calling 'taxonOccurrence' (an observation of a taxon); if I understand correctly, Bob (VegBank) uses it for for measurements of the physical plot itself. Given this persistent ambiguity, I would be in favor of abandoning 'observation' altogether. I especially want to avoid the term 'plot' as we will be loading entities other than plots to those tables: specimens and possibly list-based occurrences.