Report prepared for the Experts Meeting Towards the Implementation of a Global Invasive Species
Information Network (GISIN), 6-8 April, 2004. Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
J - i
8/30/2004
Appendix J
NISbase (Non-Indigenous Species Database
Portal): Information for Developers
Brian P. Steves, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, stevesbATsi.edu
Introduction:
During the past decade dozens of non-
indigenous species (NIS) database
workshops have been held around the
world. At the end of those meetings the
general consensus is almost always the
same; we need to develop better ways to
share our data. If you’ve attended one of
these workshops recently, it is likely you
have heard terms like “XML” and
“distributed databases” touted as the
answer to our prayers. Well, NISbase is a
relatively simple lightweight XML based
distributed database system designed for
NIS information by the Smithsonian
Environmental Research Center and the
USGS.
To test NISbase yourself, the current
version of the portal website can be found
online at
How NISbase works:
The major concepts of NISbase were
inspired by other distributed database
systems being developed, particularly
DiGIR (Distributed Generic Information
Retrieval). DiGIR is currently being
developed to share museum specimen
collections by programs such as the
Species Analyst and the MaNIS (Mammal
Networked Information System). A DiGIR
implementation of NISbase is currently
under consideration and promises to add
many improvements to the current system.
DiGIR http://digir.net
Species Analyst
NISbase, like DiGIR, functions as a
distributed system of portals and data
providers (Figure 1). The portal’s web
interface allows the user to search records
on more than one data provider at a time.
Think of the analogy of searching one of the
many travel planning sites (a.k.a. portals)
for the best airfare from multiple airlines
(a.k.a. data providers), this method is much
more efficient than searching each airline’s
website individually. With NISbase, a user
would search for NIS with the portal (Figure
2) and retrieve information from multiple NIS
databases simultaneously. Search results
are returned as a single table (Figure 3)
with links to further information from the
original data providers (Figure 4).
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