Considerations in the development of NIS:
·
The LTER hopes
to use fall CC science themes to create one new Research NIS Module per year.
·
It is important
for the NIS framework to be compatible with emerging information technologies,
such as the KNB Metacat Server, and emerging metadata standards, such as EML.
·
The NIS vision
statement will need reevaluation to be useful in guiding future NIS module
development.
Given this new emphasis on the NIS modules,
it is critical that we improve both the functionality of and participation in
the existing modules. In the near-term
this will involve the rewriting of current interfaces, and the encouragement
for all sites participate. The
rewriting of interfaces is necessary to accommodate changes in the NIS database
design made to allow extensibility and integration of NIS modules. Fulfillment of a long-term strategy to align
with emerging standards and informatics tools will require us to strengthen our
position with respect to cutting-edge computer science, and finding sources of
funding.
A workshop to revisit and rework the NIS
vision statement is recommended.
·
What incentives
or rewards are provided by NIS?
·
How can the NIS
module infrastructure facilitate research?
·
We will need PI
input to rebuild vision
·
We need to
better define the working relations of PI’s and IM’s.
·
NIS vision
should be established in conjunction with cross-site synthesis procedures
developed at Benson’s Data Synthesis Workshop
As we move toward compliance with EML and
Metacat Server technology, a pilot project (perhaps using XML to import/export
personnel directories) might be valuable to sites in understanding underlying
processes. It is recommended the NET
Office staff (Owen Eddins and
David Blankman) develop a demonstration application/tutorial for the purpose of
educating sites in this technology.
The current NIS and Network office IT
framework is geared towards Perl CGIs.
As Owen points out, the limitation of this is that the content generation (static as well as dynamic) and its presentation in the form HTML are both physically and conceptually embedded within the same programming logic. This means changes to either content or presentation affect both. Ultimately, technologies such as XSP and XSLT may be employed to help solve this problem and take advantage of XML as an exchange format.