[NHCOLL-L:344] Re: Data security and availability.

[Sherry Pittam]

 Brad,

    We use a couple of software packages designed specifically for
our research scientific community at Oregon State University and
NAVO, funded by NSF and DOD.  Both packages are available for others to
use.  We can usually offer some assistance in the setup.

    Typical use is for a PC or MAC based collections database to be
migrated to Sybase or Oracle running on a UNIX database server and using
our software packages to access the database and return results to the web
browser. One piece of software will work from a PC/NT server using 
Access or Paradox or other ODBC compliant PC database as the backend
database.  However, we don't recommend serving large amounts of data
from a desktop machine.  The other piece of software is based on an
extension of html markup tags.

    These software are flexible and have proven to be very robust
in our applications.  Training for use of them is minimal; we have 
our undergraduate students do most of our simpler interfaces.  And
several of our scientists have taken over the job of uploading new
data to the UNIX and revision of their own web form interface page. 

    If you are interested, see the applications we have running
to fish, flys, lichens, butterflies, fungi, and plant collections, and to
survey datasets.
   Our main index is at:

   http://www.nacse.org/databases/

   Documentation and details for obtaining the software or our assistance
in development are also available at this site.   

    We are also involved with the security problem and have worked out a
few solutions in regards to location data and sensitive species.  We
usually make the database server do the work by making the query limit
access to specific fields or fuzzing up the values in the lat/long fields
when we do visual plotting of data (with the note that the values are
acurate only to some defined limit determined by the data-owner). One of
our goals is for the data-owner to have full control over what is
available to the public. At the request of some of the database owners, we
only make some data available by password only, and the password is under
the control of the data-owner.  Hope this is helpful.

  Cheers,
  Sherry Pittam
  Database Specialist
  Oregon Coalition of Interdisciplinary Databases
  Oregon State University
  http://www.nacse.org/ocid/

On Fri, 19 Nov 1999, Brad Hubley wrote:

> Just out of curiosity, what software are people using to make their databases accessible over the internet?  Hopefully, within the next year or two, we will have something to put up as well.
> 
> Brad
> 
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
>   Brad Hubley
>   Entomology Collection Manager
>   Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Biology 
>   Royal Ontario Museum
>   100 Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario           
>   Canada    M5S 2C6
> 
>   Phone:  1-416-586-5764 
>   FAX:      1-416-586-5553 
>   email:  bradh at rom.on.ca 
>   Visit our website at: http://www.rom.on.ca/ontario/ 
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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