This schema specifies the format for lists of allowable relations.
Lists occur in special-purpose documents containing nothing else,
that are made accessible on the internet. BrainML links
documents may refer to these by use of an 'xlink:role' attribute that is
defined in the main brainmetal schema. They may NOT define relations
themselves. If terms need to be added, a schema authority should
submit a relation definitions document to the schema repository.
Relation definitions are a bit simpler than term definitions -- there is
no domain, and hierarchy is available but not often used.
A 'relation' is an atomic descriptor that exists in an ISA hierarchy and
is associated with a particular domain of applicability.
One or more 'external-equivalent' children may exist to link the term
to equivalents in non-BrainML systems, such as the UMLS.
Link to internal equivalent relation.
Link to external equivalent relation.
This is the identifier by which the relation will be referenced. Valid
characters in identifiers are ONLY letters, numbers, underscore,
period, and dash, and an identifier cannot start with a number. The
identifier for a relation should be unique within its containing document.
It is not fully decided whether the ISA hierarchy is a tree or a DAG
in which a relation may have multiple parents. In the latter case, the
relation actually would occur in two or more different places in the XML
element hierarchy with the same name but different IDs. One or more
'internal-equivalent' children is used to link each instance of the term
to all the others. This approach is similar to that used in the HDF5
XML format to represent directed graphs.
(see http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/XML/design-notes.html)
Used to link a relation with an equivalent term or definition in
another system, such as the UMLS. BrainML does not explicitly
support structured term definition, but through linking to another
system that does, existing semantic structure can be maintained
when metadata is expressed in BrainML.
Top-level element for a relations vocabulary document.