Introduction to UBIF (Unified Biosciences Information Framework)
Gregor Hagedorn (Federal Biological Research Center, Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biological Safety, Königin-Luise-Str. 19, 14195 Berlin, Germany)The currently proposed TDWG standards have significantly overlapping type definitions. The goal of UBIF (http://efgblade.cs.umb.edu/twiki/bin/view/UBIF) is providing a unifying framework from which multiple TDWG standards can derive common structures, type definitions and enumerations. It may (but does not have to provide the framework for commonly accepted simplified data interface concepts and linking mechanisms. UBIF is intended to be co-authored widely by authors of all contributing schemata. The draft submitted to TDWG is currently ca. 80% SDD-based and 20% ABCD-based - this needs a lot of change, we need a much wider framework! It is hoped that the meeting in Christchurch will provide fruitful discussions, add new common types and remove others considered of no truly general use.