Requirements for A Taxonomy Management System Ronald P. Reck RRecktek LLC

Presentation Overview Define the word taxonomy Process for discovering requirements Problem Security and Functional Requirements Subsets, Supersets, and Mappings between taxonomies.

What is a taxonomy The word taxonomy is often not as rigourously defined as other types of knowledge collections. Taxonomies may be used to prescribe acceptable values like authority files/controlled vocabularies do . They may be considered statements of category membership that are generally hierarchical in nature. Relationships between items can have thesaurus type relationships – BT, NT, Use, UseFor, AltLabel

Process for Requirement Discovery Discovering requirements can be more work than satisfying them. Requirements gathering is a very challenging, and iterative process. Requirements should not be construed in isolation; formulation requires communication with the interested parties possibly through several revisions of the requirements. We interviewed stakeholders to understand their needs and articulated them back to them in a written form. Building use cases can help refine exactly what will and won‘t happen. These use cases then can drive test cases later in the process.

Problem Create an enterprise grade mechanism to house collections like authority files, taxonomies, and ontology's. Determine a concept of operations for use of the system. Promote use of the system to encourage information interoperability.

Requirement Classes A strict need for security meant some requirements were classed as ‘security’ requirements – there are eight (8). Some requirements were functional in nature and spoke to achieving some task. Those requirements were classed as ‘functional’ – the following discussion lists twenty-two (22).

Security Requirements The system shall let the users register to the website. During registration, the system shall let the users provide their first name, middle name, last name, email address, affiliation and specify whether they need upload permissions. The system shall provide the user with their logon credentials upon successful registration. The system shall authenticate users on logon. The system shall restrict the users to the set of files that they are permitted to access. The system shall let the user request the permissions needed to update files. The system shall restrict the users’ updates to the set of files that they are permitted to update. The system shall require that the users possess a PKI certificate while performing updates.

Functional Requirements The system shall store the files at a central location. The system shall provide the users the access to the files via a web interface. The system shall make the user provide the Point of Contact (POC) information for each new file. The system shall let the user edit the Point of Contact (POC) information for each file. The system shall display the Point of Contact (POC) information for each file.

Functional Requirements #2 The system shall provide the ability to digitally sign files. The system shall let the users register on the website. The system shall provide the user with their logon credentials upon successful registration. The system shall restrict the user’s update capability to the set of files that they are permitted to update.

Functional Requirement #3 The system shall let the users with proper permissions perform Creation, Retrieval, Updating and Deletion of files through a web form. The system shall provide version control for the files. The system shall make available an issue tracking mechanism to allow the recording of the deficiencies in the files. The website shall be accessible through firewalls. The system shall provide auditable access.

Functional Requirements – FUN! The system shall facilitate discovery of the files by providing navigation using categorical indexes. The system shall provide the ability to add metadata for each file. The system will support the personalization of collections through the creation of subsets and supersets of enumerated values. Supersets and subsets of enumerated values will be stored as pointers in user level profiles.

Why Pointers ? - SUBSET EUROPEAN COUNTRIES CENTRAL EUROPEAN COUNTRIES ALBANIA GREECE RUSSIA ANDORRA HUNGARY ROMANIA AUSTRIA ICELAND SANMARINO BELGIUM IRELAND ITALY SCOTLAND BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA LATVIA SERBIA BELARUS LIECHTENSTEIN SLOVAKIA BULGARIA SLOVENIA CZECH REPUBLIC LUXEMBURG CROATIA TURKEY SWEDEN CYPRUS LITHUANIA SWITZERLAND MONACO DENMARK MALTA SPAIN ESTONIA MOLDOVA   NETHERLANDS  UKRAINE FINLAND UNITEDK INGDOM FRANCE NORWAY REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA  GERMANY POLAND MONTENEGRO HUNGARY AUSTRIA LIECHTENSTEIN SLOVAKIA SLOVENIA CZECH REPUBLIC SWITZERLAND       GERMANY

SUBSET - Limitations If a subset is created by copying values: What happens when values from the source change? How could or would that change propagate to the derived taxonomy? An elegant solution involves creating a subset using pointers to the source list.

SUPERSET Some taxonomy users such as the US NAVY work with landmasses and therefore begin knowledge collections with a Country Code list: The Navy extends Country Code lists to include bodies of water and subdivsions thereof. How could or would one prevent future country code list modifications from colliding with extensions?

MAPPINGS Some taxonomy users find value in lists containing similar values such as FIPS10-4 and ISO3166-2. Mapping between entities that refer to the same thing such as Burma = Myanamar are useful. Who is authoritative about mappings between taxonomies?

Questions & Comments Thanks for listening. Ronald P. Reck rreck@rrecktek.com