Open bwalsh opened 8 years ago
Given the data interchange use cases can be satisfied without regex matching I believe it makes sense to remove it. The remainder of the API relies only on strict string matching to carry out its tasks.
The problem with this approach is that it undermines the work put into controlled vocabularies like OMIM or HPO. One should be able to use synonyms in an ontology to find similar items. If partial description searching is required to satisfy basic use cases than we need to address the efficacy of our ontological models.
Partial string matching is a feature many practical applications might provide, however, for data interchange I believe it may be out of scope.
As a general comment: While we want to have data formalised, there always will be information hidden in/forced into unstructured attributes; we consistently allow description
& info
which do not have controlled vocabularies. And don't get me about case sensitivity etc.
Continuation of discussion from here ... https://github.com/ga4gh/schemas/pull/701#discussion_r76309588