An Introduction to Data Exchange Protocols in TDWG
Renato De Giovanni
Abstract
Historically, most of TDWG’s activities have been dedicated to creating standards to represent biodiversity data. Standards were created to represent biological descriptions, taxon concepts & names, specimen & observation records. Standards are currently being created for collections descriptions, literature data, and invasive species, among others.
All these standards are using a common approach based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) to structure data into a widely accepted format. Standards are increasingly important with the growing need to access, integrate and analyze the volume and variety of biodiversity data becoming available. Using such standards leads to reduced effort, cost, time and risk requirements when implementing new software applications.
During the last years, protocols for mobilizing biodiversity data have also been discussed in TDWG. Initially, this happened in the context of federated networks consisting of independent data providers sharing data using predefined data formats and protocols. Such networks needed a standard way to discover, search and retrieve distributed data over the Internet, allowing new data portals and applications to be developed. TAPIR, the TDWG Access Protocol for Information Retrieval, was created for this purpose by unifying two existing similar protocols – BioCASe and DiGIR.
As the existing data infrastructure grows, integration between different federated networks combining different kinds of biodiversity data becomes a common requirement for carrying out more complex analysis and research. In order to deal with this scenario, the TDWG Technical Architecture Group created an ontology defining semantics and relationships for some of the most relevant classes of objects that are found in TDWG data standards. The strategy also includes recommendations for using Global Unique Identifiers and data exchange protocols.
This presentation provides an overview of how to exchange data over the Internet using TDWG standards, with particular emphasis on TAPIR.
BioCASe: http://www.biocase.org/products/protocols/
DiGIR: http://digir.net/
TAPIR: http://www.tdwg.org/activities/tapir/executive-summary/
All these standards are using a common approach based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) to structure data into a widely accepted format. Standards are increasingly important with the growing need to access, integrate and analyze the volume and variety of biodiversity data becoming available. Using such standards leads to reduced effort, cost, time and risk requirements when implementing new software applications.
During the last years, protocols for mobilizing biodiversity data have also been discussed in TDWG. Initially, this happened in the context of federated networks consisting of independent data providers sharing data using predefined data formats and protocols. Such networks needed a standard way to discover, search and retrieve distributed data over the Internet, allowing new data portals and applications to be developed. TAPIR, the TDWG Access Protocol for Information Retrieval, was created for this purpose by unifying two existing similar protocols – BioCASe and DiGIR.
As the existing data infrastructure grows, integration between different federated networks combining different kinds of biodiversity data becomes a common requirement for carrying out more complex analysis and research. In order to deal with this scenario, the TDWG Technical Architecture Group created an ontology defining semantics and relationships for some of the most relevant classes of objects that are found in TDWG data standards. The strategy also includes recommendations for using Global Unique Identifiers and data exchange protocols.
This presentation provides an overview of how to exchange data over the Internet using TDWG standards, with particular emphasis on TAPIR.
BioCASe: http://www.biocase.org/products/protocols/
DiGIR: http://digir.net/
TAPIR: http://www.tdwg.org/activities/tapir/executive-summary/