EDIT

EDIT CDM Data Portal

    The EDIT Data Portal publishes taxonomic data data hosted in a CommunityStore

    either to a closed community or to the public at large. It has been implemented

    as a module for the content management system Drupal. The term

    {{{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_content_management_system}content managent system}}

    is somewhat misleading here: since the actual content is stored and managed

    by the CDM, ensuring scientific accuracy and reusability of data. Drupal offers

    a great deal of flexibility and can be extended almost indefinitely, making it

    possible to adapt the EDIT Data Portal to the individual needs of a community.

    Custom web pages, forums, and blogs are only a few of Drupal's capabilities

    available out of the box, and there is practically no limit to the number of

    modules that can be added to enhance a site with for example image galleries.

    The layout and look and feel of the application can be easily adapted to fit

    any taste.

    The EDIT Data Portal supports zoological and botanical names (support for viral

    and bacterial names should be available soon), as well as multiple concurrent

    taxonomies. Rules as specified by the nomenclatural codes ICNAFP (formerly ICBN) and ICZN are

    built into the CDM, ensuring that taxon names conform to these standards.

    User interface design was guided by the following design principles: provide

    easy access to all taxa and names; display all relevant information in one

    place where possible; and reduce complexity without compromising scientific

    accuracy. A challenge particular to taxonomy is keeping the user from losing

    his or her bearings while navigating through vast taxonomic trees; to this

    end, a sophisticated taxonomic tree browser has been developed to reduce

    confusion and make daily work with such trees more productive. A search

    function provides an additional way to access taxa.

    Each taxon is represented by an individual page, which displays the list

    of synonyms, related taxa, occurrences, descriptions, media, and more. The

    list of homotypic and heterotypic synonyms is ordered historically and grouped

    by types; its layout resembles that found in printed publications. Images of

    protologues and of type specimens are linked directly from taxon names and

    synonym lists. In addition, taxon pages will allow users to contribute

    annotations as text or images.

    Currently, EDIT Data Portals and CDM Community Stores are used to store and

    publish the work of the EDIT exemplar groups focusing on the taxonomic groups

    Cichorieae, Diptera and Palmae. Links to the demosites are found below.

Drupal

    The open source content management system Drupal becomes more and more widely

    used in the area of biodiversity informatics. This popularity is not only

    due to its capabilities to just manage content for

    websites. The genius of what the Drupal community has done, is to reduce all

    of the aspects of social software to the core and then build a platform that

    could be infinitely extended to allow the assembly of almost any styles of

    online social interaction. During the past years the community contributed

    over 3000 different modules extending the Drupal core and thus on one hand

    providing a highly flexible construction kit and on the other hand showing by

    many examples that nearly everything is possible, perhaps only limited by the

    human imagination.

    The EDIT Data Portal has been developed as a drupal module to take the

    advantage of the community support and already available resources. Since we

    offer CDM Data Portal as a package with drupal together it is not necessary

    to spend extra time learning about drupal.

~~Constructing the EDIT platform for cybertaxonomy

~~   Drupal is used to build up

~~   general web applications like forums, blogs, a central repository for users

~~   and taxonomists, the Experts Database and a software tracker and rating

~~   system. Last but not least also taxonomy related software like the

~~   Scratchpads and the CDM DataPortal is based on this system.

~~

~~   The CDM DataPortal is using Drupal as an application framework to publish

~~   taxonomic treatments to a closed community or to the public. The treatments,

~~   stored in database are, accessible via web services to which the

~~   CDM DataPortal connects to fetch the information to be displayed.

~~   Furthermore does the CDM DataPortal act as an easy to use web service

~~   allowing reusing fragments of its pages in other contexts already rendered

~~   as HTML.

~~

~~   The new TDWG standards architecture relies among others on semantic web

~~   technologies, which are tailored around a data format called RDF.

~~   Unfortunately there has always been a lack of common tools for easy

~~   processing and visualising data provided by the RDF based ontology.

~~

~~   Since the last big version switch to Drupal 6, some very interesting

~~   modules are being simmered, which will allow storing, aggregating and

~~   processing RDF data, making Drupal an highly interesting candidate for

~~   building applications which benefit from the new semantic capabilities

~~   of the TDWG standards architecture. Drupal is promising not only because

~~   of the interesting technical implementations but also because of its

~~   popularity and support from a vast community.

~~

~~   Some RDF related modules are already available although most of them

~~   still are in alpha status. One of these incorporates RDF taxonomies

~~   into Drupal, another one is actually an ensemble of modules providing

~~   comprehensive RDF functionality and interoperability.

~~

~~   With Exhibit and Potluck the SIMILE (Semantic Interoperability of

~~   Metadata and Information in unLike Environments) project of the MIT

~~   has developed interesting tools for visualizing, browsing and mixing

~~   data. Exhibit for example displays structured data in the form of rich

~~   visualizations that can be searched, filtered and sorted using faceted

~~   browsing. The Exhibit module will bring these abilities to Drupal.

~~

~~   Tools for efficiently using the TDWQG RDF ontology are in reach and

~~   await their evaluation. So the time has come to find out what is