The Prometheus taxonomic database

C. Raguenaud, J. Kennedy, P.J. Barclay
Proceedings IEEE International Symposium on Bio-Informatics and Biomedical Engineering  
In [PWK+00], a new model of plant taxonomy (the Prometheus taxonomic model) was designed to support how plant taxonomists work; in particular, it supports multiple overlapping classifications, and the necessity to distinguish the process of naming from classifying. The concepts identified in this taxonomic model necessitated the design of a new database model (POOM) in order to represent and manipulate the taxonomic data. POOM is an extended object oriented model which emphasises relationships,
more » ... thereby providing graph behaviour in an object-oriented database and providing a more expressive means of defining relationships between objects. In addition, a subset of OQL is extended (POOL) in order to accommodate the graph structures and allow a unified querying of object-oriented and graph structures. This paper presents a taxonomic database system designed in terms of the concepts offered by POOM. Through examples we show how the semantics of taxonomy, not easily represented using existing data models, can be represented using these concepts. We then show, using POOL, how the taxonomic data can be queried. Example queries highlight the need for the new features of POOL for manipulating relationships, graph structures and complex objects such as found in taxonomy.
doi:10.1109/bibe.2000.889590 dblp:conf/bibe/RaguebaudKB00 fatcat:rbdy4hwdznbldodhe6g43i6gle