1. DESERTLINKSProject (2001 – 2005) LADA MEETING, Rome, 29 November 2006 CLAUDIO ZUCCA,VERONICA COLOMBO AND GIUSEPPE ENNE NRD UNIVERSITY OF SASSARI

2. Partners: 11 organisations from England, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, The Netherland and Germany Target areas: Funded by: European Union OBJECTIVE: indicator system for European Mediterranean desertification

3. The two main products: ---The DIS4ME SYSTEM (www.kcl.ac.uk/desertlinks) ---The DIS4ME DATABASE (www.nrd.uniss.it/dis4me/) Both available on the web…..

4. (off-line demonstration follows of DIS4ME SYSTEM …..)

5. The DESERTLINKS Indicators Database Purpose A DataBase application providing the following functionalities: 1 Represent indicators and related knowledge in a relational database following the DESERTLINKS Framework;

6. Conceptual Reference base Rome, 2000

7. Classification framework for DESERTLINKS INDICATORS

8. 2 share the database among users, allowing them to access (VIA WEB) an always up-to-date version of the database: provide user-level security; divide data into public and private sections; store indicator descriptions provided by authors:  allow users to propose new indicators;  allow the administrator to validate proposals and make persistent database edits; store user comments and feedback on indicators;

9. 3 Mantain the database:  provide editing capabilities;  perform queries;  provide text/XML import/export;

10. 4 Publish the database on the Web:  make the public section available via web pages in read-only mode;  provide a mechanism for working ONLINE/OFFLINE and update local data via the web.

11. Interactivity and discussion: Comments Proposed by a user in relation to an indicator. They contain relevant informations on indicators, their use and interpretation. The comments should not only form a knowledge base, but lead authors to eventually modify indicator's specifications.

12. Users Each organization involved in the project may be granted a login to the database as accounted user. Accounted users can perform limiter edits on the database, and can access in read-only or limited edit mode to its private section. The NRD user has special administrator privileges which allow him to make any kind of edit. Public audience (guest user) will be granted read- only access to the public section of the database, directly or via web pages.

13. Editing

14. (off-line demonstration follows of DIS4ME DATABASE …..)

17. Web application architecture Users Access web interface with an internet connection. Administrator Accesses the web interface through the intranet. May remotely administer the DB. Public audience Reads up-to-date information. Performs dynamic queries. Web Application Data Base RDBMS Application Public dynamic query pages Admin edit & query private pages User Edit & query pages NRD serverInternet Client Control Panel Direct Access

18. DataBase operations Publication Web pages XML export Limited editing Proposals Persistent edits Validation Users Share data. Propose new indicators. Comment existing data. Administrator User activity. Database maintenance. Full control on Db data and structure. Query Discussion Public audience Reads the results Imports data. DataBase Application Data

19. Database structure -- Logical and conceptual model (example, not corresponding to the present final structure)