Andrey Lobanov, Igor Smirnov & Elena Voronina
Zoological institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St.-Petersburg 199034, Russia
A comparison of the different ways to represent the taxonomic hierarchy in relational databases is presented. Taxonomic tables, showing complex multilevel hierarchical schemas of taxonomy and nomenclature, are the basis of biological databases. Standardization of the taxonomy and nomenclature in the tables of relational databases is not a trivial task. Some ways to solve this problem are given by the theory of information systems (Van Tulder, 2003; Schevaev, 2004).
Independently, most of these methods have been developed in the course of the long-term creation of the databases of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Science (ZIN) (Lobanov, Smirnov, 2004). The standard ZOOCOD, comprising all these designs, is described in a number of publications (Lobanov, Zaitsev, 1991; Lobanov, Smirnov, 1997; Lobanov et. al., 1999; Lobanov et al., 2003). It has been used successfully for about 20 years now (Lobanov, Sergeev, 1986) and was distributed to other organizations besides ZIN, among others the Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Science, the Institute of ecology and evolution problems of the Russian Academy of Science, the Moscow State University, the Moscow Educational Institute, and the Nizhnii Novgorod State University. Based on this standard the national information system on the biodiversity of Russia (BIODIV - http://www.zin.ru/biodiv) was created. ZOOCOD forms an integral part of the standardization for the project ZOOINT (The Integrated System of Zoological Information), and provided a number of the affiliated projects (Lobanov et al., 1994; Smirnov et. al., 1995; Smirnov et al., 1997; Smirnov, et. al., 2002, Krivokhatsky et. al., 2003; Lobanov, Smirnov, 2004).
The concept of representation of multilevel hierarchies in relational taxonomic databases was also successfully applied to geographical data and data on morphology and ecology of animals (Medvedev, Lobanov, 1999).
Supported by grants of the Russian Foundation Basic Research (N/o 05-07-90179, 05-07-90354), the program "Biodiversity", the project "Antarctic" and the contract N 43.700.11.0002.