Data inheritance concept in mineralogical warehouse

Recently, there has been a substantial surge in the availability of web services offering access to geological, geochemical, crystallographic, and mineralogical data. Embracing this data-rich environment, mineralogy.rocks emerges as a pioneering outreach project, poised to harness the vast potential embedded in this information reservoir. Focused on extracting valuable insights, the project seeks to leverage the wealth of open-access data and fosters knowledge dissemination by openly sharing the underlying code of its processes under MIT, available on https://github.com/orgs/mineralogy-rocks. 

Mineralogy.rocks' core developers recently tackled the challenge of establishing relationships between minerals and their associated entities such as synonyms, varieties, and parental groups. Often, these related entries lack distinct properties; synonyms may only have a name and historical context, chemical varieties might differ only in impurity presence, and structural variations may diverge solely in crystal system. Database-wise, all other properties remain identical to the parent mineral. 

In response, we introduce the concept of Data Inheritance, drawing parallels with Object-Oriented Programming's class inheritance mechanism. This concept permits multiple base classes, enabling a derived class to override methods of its base class or classes, thus allowing objects to encompass diverse and arbitrary data. Applied to a data warehouse dimension, this concept facilitates the retrieval of the actual properties of a related entry defined in the database and the inherited properties not defined for this specific entry but established for the parental mineral. 

To implement this, we calculate the inheritance chain, representing the chain of relations from the bottom-most child entry to the top-most parental mineral, such as in the case of agate—chalcedony—quartz. The chain, coupled with specific code rules and patterns, enables the retrieval of properties for each entry in the chain, effectively determining which properties are pertinent to the child species. This systematic approach adds precision and clarity to the extraction and utilization of mineralogical data in the context of inherited properties.

mineralogy.rocks is dedicated to open science, prioritizing innovation, quality, and public impact in mineralogical research. Our commitment is evident through actions that swiftly share research outcomes and metadata, fostering accessibility and reuse. Embracing open science principles, we contribute to advancing the field with transparent and collaborative practices.

This project, No. 3007/01/01, has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation Programme based on a grant agreement under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie scheme No. 945478 and was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency (contracts APVV-19-0065 and APVV-22-0092).