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Diversity Workbench – Software Components for Building and Accessing Biodiversity Information
The Diversity Workbench is work in progress, aiming at developing a set of information models and application components that collaborate through agreed software interfaces. That is, each component of the Workbench applications uses services from other applications, but at the same time does not need to know about the internal design and implementation of them (encapsulation principle). The goal is increased reuse and collaboration across project and national borders.
Currently, three institutions are involved as partners: the Julius-Kühn Institut, the SNSB – Bavarian Natural History Collections and the University of Bayreuth.
For each component of the Diversity Workbench we aim at providing a comprehensive documentation of the application and the information model online. The framework for these components is currently still under development as we continue to learn about the necessary components and the best approach to the modularization of biodiversity information. A draft version providing important insight into the framework concept is, however, available.
In an initial phase during the GLOPP project GLOPP project (2000-2003) a set of prototypes was developed in Microsoft Access. The prototype applications are still available. With the exception of DeltaAccess/DiversityDescriptions they are by now largely obsolete. DeltaAccess pre-dates the Workbench concepts and is still actively used and under development. Other applications are set up as part of the GBIF-D Mycology project using .Net technology and JAVA.
Diversity Workbench online help and user guides
These are still planned to bring online.
Diversity Workbench information models
- DiversityCollection
- DiversityDescriptions
- DiversityExsiccatae
- DiversityGazetteer
- DiversityResources
- DiversityReferences
- DiversityTaxonomy
- DiversityTaxonNames
Diversity Workbench applications
(Only current applications are listed here. Compare also information about older MS Access prototypes.)
- DiversityCollection
- DiversityDescriptions
- DiversityExsiccatae
- DiversityGazetteer
- DiversityReferences
- DiversityResources
- DiversityTaxonNames
A separate tool used in combination with the Microsoft Access prototype to automate the creation of documentation and information models is the DiversityModelDocumenter, see there.
General information
Ongoing discussions
- Please add your topics here!
See also Related Sites.
We gratefully acknowledge the help of our partner Altova in providing us with the xml-spy software!
The DiversityWorkbench pages were first published 2000-11-15, moved from static html to a JSP-Wiki 2006-02-07 and ported to the current MediaWiki 2008-09-05.
