The Prometheus taxonomic database

M.R. Pullen et al. (2000) have designed a new model of plant taxonomy (called Prometheus); it supports multiple overlapping classifications, and distinguishes the process of naming from classifying. The concepts identified in this taxonomic model necessitated the design of a new database model - the Prometheus Object-Oriented Model (POOM) - to represent and manipulate the data. POOM is an extended object-oriented model which emphasises relationships, thereby providing graph behaviour in an object-oriented database and providing an expressive means of defining relationships between objects. Additionally, the Object Query Language (OQL) is extended to the Prometheus Object-Oriented Language (POOL) in order to provide unified querying of object-oriented graph structures. This paper presents a taxonomic database system designed in terms of the concepts offered by POOM. Through examples we show how the representation of the semantics and processes of taxonomy, not possible using existing data models, can be supported. Example POOL queries highlight the need for the extended features for manipulating relationships, graph structures and complex objects such as are found in taxonomies.