Diversity Workbench

The Diversity Workbench is a set of components for building and managing biodiversity information, each of which focuses on a particular domain. Each component can provide services to the other components. DiversityAgents provides information for other modules like DiversityCollection and DiversityTaxonNames.

Module of the Diversity Workbench Description
Agents Administration of the agents, i.e. people and institutions which should be documented with e.g. their addresses
Collection Administration of the scientific collections and specimens within these collections
Descriptions Administration of the knowledge about descriptions of organisms and descriptions of any other item/ element/ entity
Exsiccatae Administration of bibliographic information and standardized abbreviations of botanical and mycological exsiccatae in a global index
Gazetteers A data collection to enable the linking of geographical records with the Getty Thesaurus of Geographical Names (TGN), the German GN250 database and other sources of geographical names
Projects Administration of (research) projects as well as data collections, data packages/ datasets processed by the other DWB modules
References Administration of bibliographic data about each kind of scientific publication
Sampling Plots Administration of individual sampling plots and assigned toponyms with their hierarchy
Scientific Terms Data collections of scientific terms from foreign sources like vegetation, stratigraphy, soil science etc. and for the description of parts of the specimen like bones etc.. 
Taxon Names Administration of taxonomic names, their synonyms and hierarchical position

Main form

The main forms of all modules have a design as shown below

Main form

Status

In the status area you find

  • The name of the module,
  • The name of the database if different fron the module
  • The version of the software

The menu contains the options provided by the module

Commands

The commands area contains buttons for e.g. handling the data:

  • - To connect to a database click on the button.
  • - To save the changes in a dataset click on the button.
  • - To propagate the changes in a dataset to linked modules click on the button.
  • - To undo the changes a dataset click the button. This will recover the original data unless the changes had been saved or changes were done in certain tables or hierarchies were the data must be stored to display the hierarchy.
  • - To create a new entry in the database, click on the  button below the search result listbox. This will create a entry with the specimen and show it in the list.
  • - To copy a specimen, choose it from the list and click on the button .
  • - To options a dataset click on the button .
  • - To change the arrangement of the query click on the button.