purpose of tables

[petermr]

I believe that tables are used for some of the following:

• ingest.

  • to help normalize the input data (preferred names, ambiguities)
  • to check data values(?)

• search

  • to provide users with convenience methods for searching (especially compounds(classes) and species (family, etc.))

If the curation normalizes the data then some of the tables can be omitted.

Question: How important are author's use of plant names chemical names locations etc.

We should probably preserve the raw names as freeform text but leave it at that.