Ex710 - Biological Taxonomy

Background: Hierarchy, NLI
Related: Examples, Ex700, Ex705

Description:
The biological taxonomy describes the evolutionary path of living things. This example imports the Tree Of Life Hierarchy that is available from www.tolweb.org as an XML file. It contains approximately 35,960 entries.

Follow these steps to import the XML file into DBD:
1. Run dbd.exe
2. Create a new database file and save with desired name (ie TreeOfLife.dbd).
3. Increase db size from 256000 (1Mb) to 6400000 (25Mb).
Your PC should have more than this amount of physical memory available.
4. Import data by selecting File Menu option "Import Tree Of Life XML...".
Click OK in dialog box prompting user to increase db memory.
Select file in dialog box and click OK.
5. After approx 65 seconds (on 500 Mhz PC), a dialog box reports import status. Click OK.

Expand tree nodes starting from db\item\LifeOnEarth as shown in figure. Avoid expanding db\item\life\instance as the tree control takes approx 90 seconds to display the large number of nodes. Unnamed entries appear with the label "life" since each is an instance of the class life.



NLI Script

(; Count the number of life instances in db)
(; Gets 35960)
(count (get life instance *))

(; Count the number of things in Life on Earth Hierarchy)
(; Gets 35959)
(count (getHier (. 'Life 'on 'Earth) evolvedTo *))


(; Get Homo in evolution Hierarchy)
(; Tree displays path to Homo which is approx 70 levels deep!)
(getPath (. 'Life 'on 'Earth) evolvedTo Homo)

Notes:
The XML file downloaded from tolweb.org was modified near node ID 66855. The spelling of "Stichotrema sz?kessyi" was changed to "Stichotrema szekessyi" before importing file. The zip file below includes the modification.

Download Database and Source XML file:
Ex710.zip (4 MB)
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