Term search: multiple (apparently) equal results may be returned.

[f-marino]

Multiple terms can have exactly the same name (but be under different branches of the ontology tree) and then be shown as duplicated entries in the returned result. You need to expand the returned entries to distinguish between the two.

This could be fixed by showing a warning in the frontend advising the user to do so, when multiple "equal" terms are detected.

here an example with the bioref test dataset

This however does not address the problem that a user could select a term while thinking it is another term.
E.g., the user wants to select the term under "has lab result testkit", but only the term under "has lab result device" is shown if the user simply searches "gudid" and does not expand the element.

So probably the solution to both problems is to ALWAYS show a disclaimer in the term search bar, stating that users should always check that the returned term is indeed te one they were looking for, by looking at the path.

---

Another problem, which however probably deserves an issue on its own, is that if there are more than 10 terms that have EXACTLY the same name, terms from 11 to N will never be reachable through the term search function. I guess the only solution there is to give the user the possibility to ask for more terms.

But is it actually worth it? If a user must check one by one more than 10 results to find the right one, he would probably rather navigating the ontology tree.