biolink/biolink-model

Create a class representing Information Resources

mbrush opened this issue · 1 comments

Should we define a class in Biolink to represent the notion of an InformationResource, as implemented in the infores catalog? Would be good to have a formal, authoritative place to reference and describe what these are, and what properties they have.

Definition: an information system that provides data or knowledge content.

Description:

  • The infrastructure of such ‘information systems’ necessarily includes a database or knowledgebase to store content, and interfaces/services that deliver content to consumers (e.g. web portals, APIs, query endpoints, streaming services, data download sites, etc.)
  • A single Information Resource may span/serve content from many different datasets or databases, across its access endpoints and interfaces.
  • However, if two separate API/web service infrastructures are independently set up to distribute content from the same underlying databases - possible using different structures/models - these represent different Information Resource instances.
    Slots attached to this class can include those in the infores catalog used to collect metadata about Information Resource instances.

We already do! :) -- this is the schema I used to validate the infores_catalog.yaml (in concert with a URL checking script I wrote to ensure that every URL in the catalog resolves). https://github.com/biolink/biolink-model/blob/master/information-resource.yaml -- PR's welcome to help clarify.