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 - iv
8/30/2004
The current implementation of NISbase
takes advantage of the way many websites
display their NIS information, one species at
a time and in the form of species summaries
or fact sheets (see Figure 4). Furthermore,
websites that have search capabilities for
their NIS information allow the user to
search other simple fields such as common
name, species name and taxonomic group.
Some online NIS databases contain more
searchable fields than NISbase. To
accommodate these databases we are
developing an advanced version of NISbase
to allow the user to search on these
advanced fields such as invasion pathway,
habitat invaded, and date of first
observation.
NISbase Provider Information
If your website can dynamically create an
html table from your NIS database, you
should be able to create the XML results
needed to participate in NISbase. If you’re
unfamiliar with XML, a visit to the following
website can be helpful.
Provider Requirements:
1.)
NIS information
2.)
A web server with the ability to
dynamically create html and xml
through some scripting language
(php, asp, perl, jsp, coldfusion, etc..)
3.)
A database that the dynamic Web
pages can draw data from (ms-sql,
access, mysql, oracle, postgress,
etc.)
4.)
Ability to query database with the
current NISbase search criteria
a.
Taxonomic Group
b.
Genus
c.
Species
d.
Common Name
5.)
Ability to limit the returned result set
based on the record limit parameter.
6.)
Ability to return query results in XML
following the NISbase format.
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pQueryResults.dtd
7.)
A static IP address on the server
8.)
Creation of metadata for your
database provider
9.)
Acceptance by the NISbase charter
members
a.
Verification that other
provider requirements (1-8)
have been successfully meet
b.
Acceptable of server
response time
c.
Acceptable content
Once a query is submitted to the NISbase
portal all selected database providers will be
sent an http request of the following generic
format.
The current parameters passed to the
provider by the portal are…
1.)
ComName - “Common Name”
this should be treated as though
it is surrounded by wildcards
when querying your database.
2.)
Genus – “Genus”
3.)
Species – “Species”
4.)
State – “State” This is optional. If
a state parameter is sent and
you don’t have State specific
information, return a null result
set to the portal. We will
probably implement a “Country”
parameter in a similar fashion.
5.)
Group – “Taxonomic Group” This
is a predetermined list of
taxonomic groups hosted on the
NISbase server. (It is currently
under revision.)
6.)
“Record set limit” – To prevent
searches that return too many
records to be reasonably
processed, this establishes the
maximum number of records
each server may return.
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