Modularization and Scalability of the BExIS Experiment Data Management Platform for Environmental Research - Phase 2

Project Goals

BExIS is the central data management platform of the large-scale collaborative project " Exploratories for Functional Biodiversity Research" with a large number of individual projects, which started in 2006. BExIS stands for Biodiversity Exploratories Information System. Since its introduction in 2007, the BExIS platform has been continually developed. The BExIS ++ project aims to develop concepts and methods for long-term archiving for the data of biodiversity and ecosystem research as well as tools that facilitate collaborative research. In addition, BExIS ++ supports the development and institutionalization of consulting and teaching services on research data management at the University of Jena and the participating University of Göttingen and TU Munich.

Technical Goals

The core of the BExIS software is to extend the functionality of the current BEXIS-Software by decoupling different software components and adding modules, which enables an easy integration of new software components. This should improve the usability and flexibility of possible applications.

Organizational Goals

The project is an important element to establish a Centre of Excellence (CoE) at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. This will be done by developing basis for long-term data preservation of biodiversity research as an example.

Scientific Objectives

The project builds a solid basic for a central Knowledge Management for research and education at Friedrich Schiller University Jena.

GWDG’s Role in the Project

The GWDG is involved in two fields of the project:

Authentication and Authorization

A frequently mentioned requirement is the support of cross-system authentication and authorization by open standards like LDAP/AD and SAML. The goal of the work packages the GWDG working on is to extend the current security system and link it to existing AAI federations for example DFN AAI or edugain. This involves the evaluation of established Single-Sign-On technologies like Shibboleth and CAS, the preparation of a concept and finally implementation and testing the components.

Batch-Upload

BExIS is a part of the virtual research environment for many researchers. Those research environments are often grown through aggregation of scientific data step by step over time as BExIS currently supports for. But there is also great interest in generating such virtual research environments out of collections of data or digital objects. May be to reconstruct the results of other researches or to generate a new or an old research environment from a given collection. The GWDG takes part in the development of methods to upload such data in a high-performance way with a defined protocol in batch mode.

BExIS logo

Contact

Dr. Ulrich Schwardmann E-Mail

Duration

01.01.2015 - 31.12.2017

Website

BExIS++

Funding

DFG Logo