associatedOccurrences and data structures for this field

[bradmROM]

Hi:

I am updating associatedOccurrences in regards to related and familial birds I.e. parents, mates, siblings, in ROM Ornithology data. I am converting relationships to sensible URN designations like:

mate to ROM:Birds:114165 mate to ROM:Birds:128839|young ROM:Birds:128837

A question in regards to this fields data. The Term definition for this DWC field states A list (concatenated and separated) of identifiers of other Occurrence records and their associations to this Occurrence.`

http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/#associatedOccurrenceshttp://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/#associatedOccurrences

gives no full expansion of data structure for these terms. Examples are few and sparse.

In a large family group of birds should I expand a term like:

parent of ROM:Birds:27263-27264

to something like below which designates all relationships and each related bird`s catalogNumber:

parent ROM:Birds:27228|sibling ROM:Birds:27229|sibling ROM:Birds:27230|sibling ROM:Birds:27231|sibling ROM:Birds:27232|sibling ROM:Birds:27233|sibling ROM:Birds:27234

or concatenate the data as in the first example: parent of ROM:Birds:27261-27268

Brad Millen. ROM

[cgendreau]

I would recommend (at least from a software perspective), using the extension: http://rs.gbif.org/extension/dwc/resource_relation.xml .

[tucotuco]

I second Christian's recommendation, but I would also populate the Simple Darwin Core field associatedOrganisms (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#associatedOrganisms) rather than associatedOccurrences with the relationship information using the example given in the comments to that term. I would also populate the organismID for these records, since it is the Organisms that are being related, nit their Occurrences. The relationship is always "outward" from this organism to the ones it is related to. Using your example data, the associatedOrganisms for ROM:Birds:27229 would be as follows:

"offspring of ROM:Birds:27228 | sibling of ROM:Birds:27230 | sibling of ROM:Birds:27231 | sibling of ROM:Birds:27232 | sibling of ROM:Birds:27233 | sibling of ROM:Birds:27234"

[bradmROM]

I am off to investigate and many thanks for all input on this. I can see that I need to expand some of the data.

[tucotuco]

Reopened, because not yet documented.