The yhedn project makes use of globally recognised web standards and open source technology to build a cheap but reliable, robust and secure platform.
The technology being developed by yhedn uses an external server to serve data from all contributing LRCs. Data is exported regularly from Recorder 6 and uploaded to this regional server. As soon as the data is in the database it becomes available in a number of formats and to a number of services.
As a number of the LRCs are sustainably housed within exisitng networks which provide email servers, printers, network servers etc, we do not plan to replace these as this would represent unnecessary upheaval and an unnecessary cost to organisations who already provide these services.
Typically organisations do not provide access to licensed Microsoft SQLServer databases. Where Local Authorities have internal licenses for the software, use of this service is charged to internal budgets so the provision of this service internally is not always the most economically viable solution.
The yhedn project is recommending that a hosted server be used to provide a single Microsoft SQLServer instance which can be used by all LRCs. LRCs will have separate databases within this instance so the separation of the data for the purposes of management will remain the same.
Hosted servers give us access to high-availability technology and robust back-up strategies which we could not afford to implement in-house. It also offloads the responsibility for managing the back-up of data which will be carried out in a far more automated way.
Online data will be hosted separately to the internal databases and this will again live on a hosted server. This hosted server will require a much cheaper contract and will use a free MySQL spatial database and open source software. This separation between the internal and external data will help to maintain the security of the network.
The implications for LRCs joining the network are that their network administrator will open a port in the firewall to enable them to connect to the hosted server and the Recorder software will be installed locally and redirected to talk to our server. If an LRC has licensed and backed-up SQLServer software available internally there is no reason why they should not use this and still act as a member of the network.
Once data has been through quality assurance processes internally, it can be exported from Recorder 6 (in a cut down form) and uploaded to the online MySQL database in a reasonably automated manner.
From the online version of the data, collated regional datasets can be derived and uploaded to NBNGateway. This will be the responsibility of yhedn staff and will require no additional time from LRC officers.
Used for building websites and template pages.
XHTML is the standards based version of HTML. XHTML is aimed at making websites operate correctly on all browser platforms as well as making sites more accessible for visually impared users or non graphic devices like wap phones.
Used for building websites and template pages.
CSS2 Cascading Style Sheets are used for formatting and controlling the layout of webpages designed using XHTML.
Used for sourcing data stored on other web servers.
SOAP is a standard mechanism for invoking WebServices. WebServices allow you to get data from other webservers which can then be collated with other data, manipulated and rendered to the screen in the context of your own site. It is analagous to supermarket own brand products. The supermarket will get the products from another supplier and then just wrap the products in their own labels and branding.
Used for serving live GIS data.
WMS (Web Map Services) and WFS (Web Feature Services) are standards for the exchange of GIS data. Web Map Services provide an image of the data where as Web Feature Services provide the raw data in XML format.
Used for overlaying live GIS data onto GoogleMaps.
AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) allows JavaScript to make calls to external sites to retrieve data. In the case of the GoogleMaps implementation, AJAX calls are used both to retrieve the GoogleMaps data and the GIS overlays from our WMS / WFS servers.
Used for rendering data over GoogleEarth.
KML (Keyhole Markup Language) is an XML format used by GoogleEarth. KML is automatically generated by GeoServer.
Used for storing and managing species and biotope data internally.
Recorder 6 was developed by Dorset Software on behalf of JNCC. The database is built on top of Microsoft SQLServer. It is designed to record species and biotope data and has been built to be used primarily by LRCs, National Schemes and Societies and Vice County Recorders.
Used as the underlying database platform for Recorder 6.
Microsoft SQLServer is a commercial database platform. Spatial extensions are available to allow geometric objects (GIS data) to be stored by SQLServer but these are not inexpensive especially if the database is to be made available online.
Used to store polygon data such as site boundaries, other - non-species GIS datasets such as Air Quality and for complex spatial analysis.
MapInfo is the commercial GIS platform used by Natural England and a number of Local Authorities. ARC GIS is the main competitor and is used by the Environment Agency but most formats can be relatively easily converted.
Used to store all online data and online metadata.
The world's most successful open source database platform. MySQL is available through most web hosts and has built in support for geometry-based objects and GIS data.
Used for writing template webpages.
PHP is a scripting language for including dynamic content in webpages which links easily with MySQL
Used in template webpages for interface controls and in conjunction with AJAX for live GoogleMaps data.
PHP scripts are run once in order to build the page. JavaScript allows content to be updated and manipulated on the page without having to return to the server with another query. JavaScript is used for things like animating buttons and checking users have completed mandatory fields.
JavaScript is also used in conjunction with AJAX for for the GoogleMaps implementation.
Used to serve online GIS data.
GeoServer is an open source WMS / WFS platform. Data can be loaded in a number of different formats including ESRI shapefiles and MySQL spatial tables.
NBNGateway is a national database run by JNCC and the NBNTrust to collate and manage species data nationally.
BARS is an online database run by Natural England to manage species and habitat action plans and to coordinate activity across administrative boundaries.
GoogleMaps is freely licensed online mapping provided by Google. Default views include maps and satellite / aerial imagery but developers can add their own views. yhedn has developed views with data overlaid on top of the maps or satellite imagery.
GoogleEarth is a fully interactive 3 dimensional digital globe. A number of layers are contributed by users but data described using KML can also be overlaid. The yhedn project is developing a number of layers which can be loaded into GoogleEarth in this way.