@inproceedings { , title = {Approaches to Storing and Querying Structural Information in Botanical Specimen Descriptions.}, abstract = {We are developing an ontology as a defined terminology for the taxonomic description of botanical specimens. To allow these descriptions to unambiguously refer to a given plant structure, the ontology specifies compositional relationships between anatomical structures, as well as providing textual definitions for structural terms. We are testing a variety of approaches for representing this compositional hierarchy in a relational database, so that descriptions can refer to the compositional context (path) of any structure being described. We compare the relative advantages of storing and querying path information in an XML representation or as a materialized string.}, conference = {21st Annual British National Conference on Databases (BNCOD21)}, isbn = {1-904410-12-X}, note = {School: sch\_comp}, organization = {Edinburgh}, pages = {80-91}, publicationstatus = {Published}, url = {http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/3025}, keyword = {004 Data processing & computer science, QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science, QH Natural history, Software systems, Centre for Algorithms, Visualisation and Evolving Systems, AI and Technologies, Biology, Data analysis, Computing, Ontological methodology, Defined terminology, Taxonomy, Compositional relationships, Anatomical structures, XML, Materialised strings, Evaluation;}, year = {2004}, author = {Paterson, Trevor and Kennedy, Jessie} editor = {MacKinnon, L M and Burger, A G and Trinder, Phil} }