Dear all,

The IPT development team are happy to announce that the IPT 2.0 release candidate 2 (IPT 2.0RC2) is now available for download and testing from http://code.google.com/p/gbif-providertoolkit/downloads/list

Thank you once again to everyone who has reported bugs and proposed enhancements during the testing phase. Since the IPT 2.0RC1 was released some 43 issues have been reported and addressed (http://tinyurl.com/2g9jzjo)

In particular the following critical issues have been worked on, and any assistance in testing them would be greatly appreciated.

- IPT operation on windows environments - Performance in connection of the IPT to databases (PostGRES, MySQL, Oracle, MSSql) - We particularly seek assistance testing connections to Oracle and MSSql

The IPT will not be released until the testing community confirms that the product is suitably robust to do so. At this stage, we anticipate releasing 2.0RC3 during week 1, 2011 which will allow users to register against the live GBIF registry, with the expectation that a final 2.0 General Availability release (2.0GA) will be offered in week 3, 2011. However, this depends on the outcome of further tests.

Our roadmap planning is based on the issues on http://code.google.com/p/gbif-providertoolkit/issues/list

Thank you once again for all your contributions and as always, we welcome suggestions on how we can improve the process.

Kind regards,

Tim, on behalf of the IPT development team