EDIT WP5 Platform for Cybertaxonomy

This report has been compiled by Dominik Mikiewicz (MIZPAN) with contribution made by users of the wp5-geo-edit@mnhn.fr mailing list, especially Andreas Müller (BGBM), Pere Roca (CSIC) and Pablo Sastre Olmos (CSIC)

The ViTaL metasearch service uses the standard Z39.50 protocol to send queries to online public access catalogues (OPACs). ViTaL uses this facility to allow the querying of EDIT partner library resources, hence the need for these libraries to supply the relevant connection information to the ViTaL team.

To ensure the future compatibility of the platform with other initiatives in the world, it was decided to integrate the existing tools into the cybertaxonomy platform by using a unique already-existing public standard exchange format for descriptive data: the TDWG-SDD XML schema. This choice was made in accordance with the late efforts of several existing tools (DiversityDescriptions, Xper², Lucid, FRIDA) to allow interoperability with SDD.

The original EDIT platform for cybertaxonomy as planned in the initial description of work was designed as a set of loosely coupled independent biodiversity informatics applications communicating via well defined interfaces. This architecture has dramatically changed during the first project year towards a set of applications being built around a common data model (CDM) which is the basis for data processing in the entire platform (http://dev.e-taxonomy.eu/trac/wiki/CommonDataModel#CDMVersion1.0). This decision changed also the design of the “taxonomic core components” from an autonomous application and database system for capturing and maintaining taxonomic core data (names, taxa, synonymies, etc.) into an integrated part of the CDM-based platform.

The CDM community store acts as a central datastore for versionable Common Data Model data. Web services to access the community store have been implemented as proposed at http://dev.e-taxonomy.eu/trac/wiki/CommunityServer.

HR : Virtual Herbarium
Work master index

In order to insure a long term document recovery, the participants
will use the ISO Open Document Format (O.D.F.) for common texts,
presentations and spreadsheets.

An automatic conversion of proprietary formats (Word, Excel and
Power Point) will be provided as a front-end towards the long term
storage.

O.D.F. is designed as a XML format, allowing subsequent data mining by future independent applications.

In order to promote the access to digital environmental data the last number of the IBS NEWSLETTER (http://www.biogeography.org/html/newsletter.html) announces the launching of web page developed by the CSIC team within the EDIT 5.4, which allows us to download environmental cartography from diverse sources in a unified and standardized way (http://edit.csic.es/GISdownloads.html).

The third ISTC meeting will be held between 12:00 – 17:00 on October 1st & between 09:00 – 13:00 on October 2nd, 2008 in the Conference Room (A105) on the 2nd Floor of the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, Freie Universität Berlin, Königin-Luise-Str. 6-8, D-14191 Berlin, Germany.