Diversity Workbench – Software components for building and accessing biodiversity information

The modularized Diversity Workbench (www.diversityworkbench.net) represents a virtual research environment for multiple scientific purposes with regard to management and analysis of life sciences data. The framework is appropriate to store different kinds of bio- and geodiversity data and facilitates the processing of ecological, molecularbiological, observational, collection and taxonomic data. It is capable and flexible enough to be applied as data storage unit for institutional data repositories. The Diversity Workbench is set up on a xml-enabled relational database system. Clients of every database of the Workbench are used as stand-alone applications and provide supporting functions to clients of corresponding databases. This results in a high flexibility with regard to the conceptual design, enabling sophisticated user administration and a rapid setup of project-specific and user-adapted entry forms. Further, it facilitates the dynamic integration of web services and external data resources. Functions for field data gathering are provided by the application DiversityMobile (DFG-funded project presented under http://www.diversitymobile.net), designed for monitoring ecological and biological data, using mobile devices. The database DiversityCollection provides the option to export data to GBIF via the BioCase-Wrapper by using the TDWG standard schema ABCD.