[Tdwg-tag] Position of GBIF in architecture and centralization of services.

[Roger Hyam]

I have added two agreed issues to the TAG wiki on the basis of the 
discussions over the past few days. I won't add this to the end of the 
current threads as they are way off their original topics.

I hope they will lay some ghosts to rest so we don't have to drag them 
up again to often - provided we all agree on them that is!

The new points I believe we can agree on are:

*The standards architecture developed and promoted by TDWG must be 
entirely separate from the GBIF data portal.*
Although GBIF is involved in administering the TDWG Infrastructure 
Project which, in turn, has recommended the establishment of the TAG 
this in no way implies that any technical architecture proposed by the 
TAG will or should give the needs of the GBIF data portal any more 
weight than any other individual or group within the TDWG. Any proposals 
made by the TAG will be accompanied by technical justifications. It 
should therefore be clear if proposals are being made merely to 
facilitate the short term work of the GBIF data portal and not for the 
long term benefit of all.

*Centralization of services*
The TDWG architecture should not rely on any third party providing a 
particular piece of infrastructure indefinitely. This effectively rules 
out the architecture being based on any centralized data warehouse or 
indexing service beyond the hosting of standards files by TDWG itself - 
possibly as part of its collaborative infrastructure.

You can read all agreed issues here:

http://www.tdwg.hyam.net/twiki/bin/view/TAG/TagDiscussionRoadMap

I believe this closes issues of whether we are building a global system 
or just specifying standards that could be used to collaboratively build 
a global system should people feel the need to do it.

Speak now for forever hold your peace!

All the best,

Roger


I 


-- 

-------------------------------------
 Roger Hyam
 Technical Architect
 Taxonomic Databases Working Group
-------------------------------------
 http://www.tdwg.org
 roger at tdwg.org
 +44 1578 722782
-------------------------------------

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-tag/attachments/20060306/a3583018/attachment.html