Aliases for TopLevel objects

[jakebeal]

When dealing with a design, I often find that there are multiple equivalent ways to refer to a single item.

For example:

• An iGEM part can be referred to with or without the BBa prefix (e.g., J23101 vs. BBa_J23101)
• A small molecule can be referred to by its PubChem or CHEBI identifier (e.g., Arabinose is both pubchem.compound:439195 and CHEBI:17535)
• An aliquot can be referred to by an SBOL Implementation or a LIMS system identifier.

Right now, I track these relationships with special-purpose code, mapping from aliases to a preferred canonical form. I think it would be better to have a standardized way of recording and tracking such relationships, similar to what was done with the SBOL Project Dictionary.

I don't think we have enough use cases to go straight to a standard yet, but it would be good to begin experimenting with this.

[goksel]

Some terms that can be used to represent the alternative names:

• rdfs:label
• dcterms:title
• skos:altLabel

[cjmyers]

Let's go with rdfs:label