The Ecobase project: database and web technologies for environmental information systems

ABSTRACT

A very large number of data sources on environment, energy, and natural resources are available worldwide. Unfortunately, users usually face several problems when they want to search and use relevant information. In the Ecobase project, we address these problems in the context of several environmental applications in Brazil and Europe. We propose a distributed architecture for environmental information systems (EIS) based on the Le Select middleware developed at INRIA. In this paper, we present this architecture and its capabilities, and discuss the lessons learned and open issues.

REFERENCES

• 1: {AMS+00} M. Amzal, I. Manolescu, E. Simon, F. Xhumari, A. Lavric. Sharing Autonomous and Heterogeneous Data Sets and Programs with Le Select, http://caravel.inria.fr/Fprototype_LeSelect.html.
• 2: Luc Bouganim , Françoise Fabret , Fabio Porto , Patrick Valduriez, Processing Queries with Expensive Functions and Large Objects in Distributed Mediator Systems, Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Data Engineering, p.91-98, April 02-06, 2001
• 3: R. M. M. Braga , C. M. L. Werner , M. Mattoso, Using Ontologies for Domain Information Retrieval, Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications, p.836, September 06-08, 2000
• 4: {CSL+00} M.C. Cavalcanti, E. Simon, F. Llirbat, M. Mattoso, M.L. Campos. Scientific Experiments Management in Heterogeneous Distributed Database Systems, Technical Report, COPPE-UFRJ, July 2000.
• 5: {GST98}H. Galhardas, E. Simon, A. Tomasic. A Framework for Classifying Scientific Metadata. AAAI Workshop on AI and Information Integration. Madison, Wisconsin, August 1998.
• 6: {HNL+99} C. Houtsis, C. Nikolaou, S. Lalis, S. Kapidakis, V. Christophides, E. Simon, A. Tomasic. Towards a Next Generation of Open Scientific Data Repositories and Services. CWI Quaterly, 12(2), 1999.
• 7: A. A. B. Lima , C. Esperanca , M. Mattoso, A Parallel Spatial Join Framework Using PMR-Quadtrees, Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications, p.889, September 06-08, 2000
• 8: {MCB99} A. Moura, M. L. Campos, C. M. Barreto. A Survey on Metadata for Describing and Retrieving Internet Resources, World Wide Web Journal, 1, 1999.
• 9: {MPT00} A.M. Moura, H. Perez, A. Tanaka. A Metadata Model for Supporting Data Extraction from Environmental Information Systems, Int. Conf. on Geographic Information Science, Savannah, Georgia, 2000.
• 10: Esther Pacitti , Pascale Minet , Eric Simon, Fast Algorithms for Maintaining Replica Consistency in Lazy Master Replicated Databases, Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, p.126-137, September 07-10, 1999
• 11: Esther Pacitti , Eric Simon , Rubens Melo, Improving Data Freshness in Lazy Master Schemes, Proceedings of the The 18th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, p.164, May 26-29, 1998
• 12: {TBC+98} A. Tanaka, S. Behring, C. Chagas, S. Fuks. The Brazilian Geo-referenced Soil Information System. World Congress of Soil Science, Montpellier, France, 1998.
• 13: Anthony Tomasic , Louiqa Raschid , Patrick Valduriez, Scaling Access to Heterogeneous Data Sources with DISCO, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, v.10 n.5, p.808-823, September 1998 [doi>10.1109/69.729736]
• 14: Anthony Tomasic , Eric Simon, Improving access to environmental data using context information, ACM SIGMOD Record, v.26 n.1, p.11-15, March 1997 [doi>10.1145/248603.248606]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.8 Database applications
          Subjects: Scientific databases

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.4 Systems
          Subjects: Distributed databases

  J. Computer Applications
  J.2 PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING
      Subjects: Earth and atmospheric sciences

General Terms:
Design