Glossary of Terms

Glycan

A molecule composed of saccharide units and substituents

Monosaccharide

A single saccharide unit which is composed of a carbon backbone with hydroxyl side chains or substituent groups.

Topological Matching

When discussing a topological matching traversal, the algorithm does not check whether the precise connection locations of edges match, just that there exists an edge which connects a matching parent node to a matching child node between two trees/graphs. This is particularly useful when unknown linkages are present. For example, a-D-Neup5Ac-(2-3)-b-D-Galp-(1-3)-b-D-Glcp2NAc would match a-D-Neup5Ac-(2-6)-b-D-Galp-(1-3)-b-D-Glcp2NAc despite the difference in the linkage between a-D-Neup5Ac and b-D-Galp. The alternative is a Exact Matching traversal.

Exact Matching

When discussing an exact matching traversal, the algorithm requires that the positions of all connections of matching nodes between two trees/graphs must also match to be considered a full match. For example, a-D-Neup5Ac-(2-3)-b-D-Galp-(1-3)-b-D-Glcp2NAc would not match a-D-Neup5Ac-(2-6)-b-D-Galp-(1-3)-b-D-Glcp2NAc because of the difference in the linkage between a-D-Neup5Ac and b-D-Galp.

RDF

Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a web technology standard for specifying a semantic description of data. It is used by the glySpace project and affiliated databases to represent glycans, glycoconjugates, and related entities.

SPARQL

SPARQL is a query language for rdf.