Tropicos: The Next Generation - Lessons Learned on the Biodiversity Information Highway
Chuck Miller & John Sheppard, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Email: chuck.miller@mobot.org; john.sheppard@mobot.orgThis presentation will provide an overview of the design, lessons learned, new techniques and future plans for Tropicos: The Next Generation.
During development of Tropicos:TNG many lessons have been learned including new approaches to enabling rapid response times with massive relational data content, new data structures and functions for partial dates and geo-political ambiguities, taxonomic visualization techniques, UTF encoding, DIGIR/ XML interfaces, and systematic botanist requirements versus general reference users.
Tropicos:TNG implements feature-rich graphical user interfaces, web services and a more robust and responsive data model built on relational database technology, n-tier component model, and real-world performance testing. In future Tropicos:TNG will link to as many other systems as possible via web services or out-links using eventual TDWG/GBIF standards.
Since 1982 Tropicos has been the primary tool of 50 MBG botanists and associated support staff to prepare published taxonomic works as well as MBG collectors for field collection, curators for herbarium management, and analysts for biodiversity projects. It includes over 1 million plant names/concepts with relations/references/types and almost 2 million name-linked specimens, a taxonomic web of facts that is a prime on-line reference for systematic botanists globally. Over 40,000 name, specimen, and reference queries are received daily at www.tropicos.org.