Taxamatch Web service

What is TAXAMATCH?

TAXAMATCH is a “fuzzy” or near match algorithm developed by Tony Rees at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Australia, over the period 2007-9 (with precursors from 2001 onwards), with the purpose of providing optimal fuzzy matching for genus and species scientific names in real world situations. It will match both phonetically (e.g. "Caelorhynchus" to "Coelorinchus") and non-phonetically (e.g. "Hombo sapient" to "Homo sapiens"), provided of course that the desired target name is actually present in the reference database at which the particular instance of TAXAMATCH is directed.

Official Resource developed by Tony Rees:
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/datacentre/taxamatch.htm

PHP Web service Version

The original project developed by Tony is a human interactive model made to be used much like an online dictionary to help identify a species. Our aim with this version is to provide a RESTful JSON service based on a PHP/MySQL model providing the same service but aimed towards data cleaning, scripting applications, and real time mashups. Our final goal is to allow other developers the ability to send RESTful style requests and receive useful information about taxon names back to use for their projects. As we progress with this project we will keep updating this page and any major announcements will be posted on our official blog/news center.

Demo Version

To understand how the engine works you can try out our current version of taxamatch. Currently we use the Catalogue of Life 2009 as our testing datasource. Note: This is not meant to be a live web service for use but to show how it is possible to setup your own data source for queries. If we do release a online service for different data sources we will make an announcement on our blog.

View Graphical Demo Here

Demo from iPhone go to url: http://tinyurl.com/taxamatch

RESTful Service can be found here. More documentation on how to use the service will be provided in the future.

SOAP Service (Currently In Development: Jan 26th, 2010)

Other Examples:

• Did you mean - This is an example of how you can provide alternatives to misspellings.
• Google Spreadsheet Usage - This shows how the services can be used for direct usage in spreadsheets.
• Check Spelling - In development
• If you are interested in other examples let us know and we will do what we can to add this more examples.
  
  

Download Source & Run Locally

This project is distributed under the GNU LGPL license and is available for download at: http://code.google.com/p/taxamatch-webservice.
Here are some useful links about the current version:

• Read Me File

• Install File

Getting Involved

If you are interested in contributing to this project and making it better please send us an email on our contact form. Be combining efforts allows the community to have one refined tool that everyone can use.

Related Projects & Other Ports in Different Programming Languages

More information about other versions of Taxamatch can be found at: http://code.google.com/p/taxon-name-processing/wiki/TaxamatchInfo