1. speciesLink The Brazilian experience on setting up a network Renato De Giovanni renato@cria.org.br Centro de Referência em Informação Ambiental, CrIA

2. CrIA Reference Center on Environmental Information http://www.cria.org.br CrIA is a not-for- profit, non- governmental organization that aims to contribute towards a more sustainable use of Brazil’s biodiversity through the dissemination of high quality information.

3. Overview of the speciesLink project Objective Type of collections involved Number of records Budget Technical features Future plans

4. The main goal of speciesLink was to build a distributed system integrating several biological collections and making their primary data available on the Internet. speciesLink Distributed Information System for Biological Collections http://splink.cria.org.br

5. The speciesLink project is being funded by Fapesp (São Paulo state agency) since October, 2001.

6. fish: 3 herbaria: 4 microorganisms: 3 mites: 2 inventories: SinBiota Geographic distribution of the participating collections São Paulo State Collections

7. Number of Records from 12 collections availableexisting Herbaria72,000of740,000 Microorganisms1,000of2,700 Mites18,000of22,000 Fish10,000of163,000 Inventories (species) 38,000of38,000 139,000of~1,000,000

8. Support to collections Providing basic equipment and network infrastructure Helping to choose a management system, when needed Helping to train and to import data, when needed

9. Project Cost(2 years) Project Cost (2 years) ~US$ 600K

10. Protocol and Content Schema DiGIR protocol (Distributed Generic Information Retrieval) Potential to be globally accepted DiGIR software (Java Portal & PHP Provider) Collaborative development DarwinCore v.2 Covers the basic content elements (taxonomic identification, location and date of collecting event)

11. Simple Search Interface

12. speciesLink site Presentation Layer speciesLink site Presentation Layer DiGIR Portal (Java) DiGIR Portal (Java) Perl Slow or unstable connectivity Fast and stable connectivity Data SOAP client Collection Management System SQL Collection C Data Repository Data SOAP client Collection Management System SQL Collection B Data Repository Postgres PHP Provider SOAP Server SQL Regional Server Data PHP Provider Collection Management System SQL Collection A System’s Architecture

13. Regional Server Network Design

14. speciesLink site Presentation Layer speciesLink site Presentation Layer DiGIR Portal (Java) DiGIR Portal (Java) Perl Slow or unstable connectivity Fast and stable connectivity Data SOAP client Collection Management System SQL Collection C Data Repository Data SOAP client Collection Management System SQL Collection B Data Repository Postgres PHP Provider SOAP Server SQL Regional Server Data PHP Provider Collection Management System SQL Collection A System Architecture

15. Data Migration Client Platform independent (java) Connects to any database accessible via JDBC (simple text files are also supported) Complete control over data Low traffic Possibility to filter sensitive data by using regular expressions

16. speciesLink site Presentation Layer speciesLink site Presentation Layer DiGIR Portal (Java) DiGIR Portal (Java) Perl Slow or unstable connectivity Fast and stable connectivity Data SOAP client Collection Management System SQL Collection C Data Repository Data SOAP client Collection Management System SQL Collection B Data Repository Postgres PHP Provider SOAP Server SQL Regional Server Data PHP Provider Collection Management System SQL Collection A System Architecture

17. Regional server perl / PostgreSQL combination Can hold data from several collections Interpretation rules can be applied to specific data Postgres Provider PHP SOAP Server (perl) SQL

18. Query Result (brief)

19. Future plans Mapping tool

20. Future plans Mapping tool Data cleaning tools

21. Future plans Mapping tool Data cleaning tools Modeling framework and…

22. >30 collections available

23. Summing up Achieved proof of concept Data is already available (human and machine interfaces) Triggered off a movement within the collections to improve the quality of data and to increase the amount of available information Most interesting part of the game: interoperability

24. Thank you! http://splink.cria.org.br renato@cria.org.br Obrigado! Any questions? Perguntas?