[IPT] IPT Roadmap

[Tim Robertson (GBIF)]

Dear all,

Please accept my apologies for cross posting this, but in case you  
were not on the previous mailing list, I would like to draw your  
attention to the communication sent below.
We will shortly be revising all the issues in the code site to reflect  
the status of the revised version.  An IPT user group is being set up  
today on http://community.gbif.org to discuss the IPT, in addition to  
this mailing list.

Please do contact me for any clarifications you need.

Many thanks,
Tim


[FOR INFORMATION]

Dear Node Managers and Data Publishers,

The objective of this communication is to update you on the current
situation of the GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT).  The IPT is a
tool providing publishing capabilities for primary biodiversity
occurrence data, taxonomic checklists and the associated metadata for
these resource types.

Since its first introduction in March 2009, the IPT has been used with
some success by a limited number of users to publish primary
biodiversity data into the GBIF network, along with descriptive metadata
at the dataset level.

The GBIF Secretariat (GBIFS) has solicited and received a vast amount of
feedback during the first year of the IPT use, and would like to thank
all those who provided this.  The feedback received overwhelmingly
confirms that the concept of the IPT is sound. However, feedback has
also made it clear that it is over-specified for the majority of user
needs, is not yet sufficiently robust, is too slow in operation, and
(due to the excessive functionality) has high server requirements
creating a barrier for many to adopt and use it.  In addition, the
feedback has made it clear that our communications surrounding the
status of the IPT releases have been too infrequent and unclear
concerning which release candidate we were offering and what
functionalities this release candidate would include or not include, as
per user needs/expectations.

Based upon the extensive feedback GBIFS has revised our planned
development roadmap for the IPT and are currently performing a major
refactoring effort to:
*    Reduce the server requirements significantly
*    Increase the data import performance by removing the embedded  
database
*    Remove the dependency on heavy libraries and tools such as  
Geoserver
*    Remove all data interfaces that are not necessary for data  
publication through GBIF
*    Improve the robustness of the tool

When complete, the refactored IPT will offer through an intuitive
interface:
*    Authoring of metadata according to the GBIF metadata profile
*    Import and mapping of checklist and occurrence data either from  
file upload or by connection of a database
*    Registration to and publication onto the GBIF network
*    Importing and mapping of data to the DarwinCore, and DarwinCore  
extensions
*    Output formats of EML (2.1.0) metadata and DarwinCore Archive
*    Improved customisation options for the "About this IPT"
*    Improved GBIF Registry integration
*    Improved DarwinCore extension and vocabulary organization
*    Improved management of the organisations to which the IPT and  
resources are related, to enable co-hosting capabilities
*    Enhanced dataset metadata authoring

Whilst this is a reduction in existing functionality this has been
deemed necessary to ensure the IPT is meeting the core requirements as
expressed by the user community.  The following features will be removed
and only reintroduced if necessary through consultation with the IPT
community:
*    TAPIR interface
*    TCS output format
*    Search and browse web interface
*    OGC web services

All IPT development efforts are now focused on this revised roadmap, and
it is anticipated that early testing of the new codebase will commence
in October 2010 with the involvement of willing Nodes.  The release of a
fully stable IPT is targeted for the end of 2010. However, this will
only occur if the testing community is satisfied that the product is
'release-ready' together with the required user manual and technical
documentation.  Should that not be the case, as it may take more time to
implement and test the improvements outlined above, you will be informed
as soon as possible.

Further developments of the IPT beyond this release will only be
implemented after a further scoping with the GBIF community.  An area
for further IPT discussion will be set up on the GBIF community website
(http://community.gbif.org)

If you have any questions or would like to know more about the GBIF IPT
and/or revised process, feel free to contact:

Tim Robertson
GBIF Information Systems Architect
trobertson at gbif.org

With best regards,

Tim Robertson
GBIF Secretariat
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