Taxon Name Service I/O

Taxon Name Service (TNS) I/O

• Takes a name (language optional) or a number (language specified)
• Returns an collection of names or numbers in the other languages it knows about
  • For example, given ITIS=174371, returns ITIS=174371, NCBI=8782
• In the context of this subgroup, the TNS is a black box (we don't specify how it does the name resolution)
• For example: Glasgow Taxonomic Name Server (GTNS)
  • GTNS takes "taxon_name" via POST to find_name_result.php
  • example:
    • in: taxon_name="Aves"
    • returns:

<xml> <Taxon namespace="GNS/TaxonName" ID="21753">

 <CrossReferences>
   <Object namespace="ITIS/id" ID="174371"/>
   <Object namespace="NCBI/id" ID="8782"/>
 </CrossReferences>

</Taxon> </xml>

• perhaps more ideally a name service would return:

<xml> <Taxon namespace="GNS/id" id="21753" name="Aves" >

 <CrossReferences>
   <Object namespace="ITIS/id" id="174371" name="Aves" />
   <Object namespace="NCBI/id" id="8782" name="Aves" />
 </CrossReferences>

</Taxon> </xml>

• perhaps even better a name service would return:

<xml> <CrossReferences>

  <CrossReference>
      <string id="namespace">GNS</string>
      <string id="id">21753</string>
      <string id="name">Aves</string>
  </CrossReference>

  <CrossReference>
      <string id="namespace">ITIS</string>
      <string id="id">174371</string>
      <string id="name">Aves</string>
  </CrossReference>

  <CrossReference>
      <string id="namespace">NCBI</string>
      <string id="id">8782</string>
      <string id="name">Aves</string>
  </CrossReference>

  <CrossReference>
      <string id="namespace">PaleoDB</string>
      <string id="id">36616</string>
      <string id="name">Aves</string>
  </CrossReference>

  <CrossReference>
      <string id="namespace">COL</string>
      <string id="id">1854</string>
      <string id="name">Aves</string>
  </CrossReference>

</CrossReferences> </xml>