System access protocols

System access protocols are used to develop interfaces between systems that exchange data, instructions, requests or responses. The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is an open standard with wide acceptance in the software development community that is designed for exchange of information in a decentralized, distributed environment and is ideal for exchanging messages between different computer systems. SOAP is XML-based. More information on SOAP is available at http://www.w3c.org.

DiGIR (Distributed Generic Information Retrieval) is an access protocol initiative adopted by the TDWG/CODATA Biological Collections Data Subgroup, GBIF and NBII, and is managed as an open-source project (http://digir.sourceforge.net). DiGIR, designed to be a successor to the z39.50 based protocols used in Species Analyst and other projects in the biodiversity community, uses XML documents to define and handle federated search requests based on any chosen data exchange schema. It is in use today by projects such as the MaNIS (Mammal Networked Information System, http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/manis/) in conjunction with the Darwin Core (specimen collections) metadata format. Although its roots are in biological informatics, the DiGIR protocol can be used with other data formats to develop networks for other applications.

IABIN will support both SOAP and DiGIR for its distributed networks. SOAP is expected to continue achieving broad acceptance within the general software development community. DiGIR is expected to develop a significant following within the biological informatics community and may provide advantages for biological applications. GBIF is supporting both protocols for the development of its global network. It is also anticipated that several relevant museum collections of interest to IABIN and the Species Analyst will be migrated to DiGIR standards and protocols. As a result, the data available within these projects can be integrated into the IABIN network through the adoption and application of these protocols.