Optionally provide aliases with get_descendants(), etc.

[patrickkwang]

This is motivated by the desire to receive biolink:ChemicalSubstance as a descendant of biolink:NamedThing, for backwards compatibility.

[cmungall]

I'm tending against this. I think we should make it very easy for people to compose two calls together, e.g.

• lookup by alias o descendants

The caller can then implement any logic they need for edge cases, e.g

• aliases are not guaranteed unique
• allowing for case insensitive matches, camelcase transforms or even levenstein distance
• specifying alternate concept IDs in queries

I think the core lib could become bloated if we try and anticipate every possible use case and way functions can be combined

This would be great for a UI though

I could be persuaded to have something like this in a kind of supplemental grab-bag utility library that wraps a simpler core lib

I may be being a too pedantic computer scientist though so if there is strong need for this we can add (I am guessing not though given I assume this was August!)

[sierra-moxon]

closing for now. please reopen if you would like us to reconsider @patrickkwang :)