[MOBY-dev] Updating vs generating RDF

[Mark Wilkinson]

Hi Pi!

The answer to your question may be simple, or may be complex, depending on  
how dramatic your service interface changes are!

In the RDF, the URIs that look like:
http://biomoby.org/RESOURCES/MOBY-S/ServiceInstances/e0578ca78558ba81463c3e9f59412c9b

are simply hashes designed to be unique to that node, for that service  
provider, for that service.  This ensures that we don't get  
node-collisions when we integrate RDF from multiple service providers (as  
was previously a problem with the auto-naming of bnodes that some RDF  
libraries did).

So... if you need to edit the content of one of those nodes, just go ahead  
and edit the content, and leave the node ID intact.  If you need to remove  
a node, go ahead and remove it, no problem.  If you need to ADD a node,  
however, then you're going to have to generate a 100% unique ID for that  
node (unique within all of moby central).

Eddie can tell you how he hashes things to generate that number.

Editing the RDF can be done in any text editor, but you might prefer to do  
it in Protege or whatever your preferred RDF editor is.

Cheers!

Mark




On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:24:55 -0700, Pieter Neerincx  
<pieter.neerincx at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Moby developers,
>
> I was wondering if one of you can point me to an easy way to update the  
> RDF for an already registered moby service?
>
> Generating the RDF the first time was easy. I used dashboard and there's  
> also an online web form linked from the Biomoby website. But I cannot  
> figure out how to update the RDF. The documentation tells me I have to  
> update and then either call the RDF agent or simply wait for the next  
> pass. The latter is easy, but I don't seem to be able to generate  
> updated RDF for my service with the dashboard. When I modify my service  
> I can save the service registration XML without registering, but I  
> cannot save the RDF. The only way the RDF is generated and saved is  to  
> click the register service button, but that one fails because the  
> service is already registered. Clicking unregister service first to  
> reregister the updated version will fail of course too as you cannot  
> unregister a service that was registered with an RDF signature URL.  
> Likewise the online form the generate the RDF cannot be used, because it  
> only works for existing services.
>
> I looked at the RDF to update it manually. I can patch most of it  
> manually, but there are Description tags like this:
>
> 	<rdf:Description  
> rdf:about="http://biomoby.org/RESOURCES/MOBY-S/ServiceInstances/e0578ca78558ba81463c3e9f59412c9b">
>
> Where do those numbers at the end of the rdf:about attribute value come  
> from?
>
> As far as I can figure out the only way to get my service RDF updated is  
> to remove the RDF, call the agent to unregister the service and then to  
> re-register a new one, but I was hoping to find a more elegant approach  
> :)....
>
> Cheers,
>
> Pi
>
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-- 
Mark D Wilkinson, PI Bioinformatics
Assistant Professor, Medical Genetics
The James Hogg iCAPTURE Centre for Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Research
Providence Heart + Lung Institute
University of British Columbia - St. Paul's Hospital
Vancouver, BC, Canada