| ABCD |
Access to Biological Collection Data. See http://www.bgbm.org/TDWG/CODATA/Schema/default.htm. |
| Access Point |
The URL (web address) of a Web Service. |
| Backus-Naur Form |
a metasyntax used to express context-free grammars. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus-Naur_form. |
| BioCASe |
Biological Collections Access Service. See http://www.biocase.org. |
| CNS |
Concept Name Server. A service to get information about existing conceptual schemas and their concepts. |
| Concept |
Definition of a property, class or relationship. |
| Conceptual schema |
A formal definition of concepts. It can also be seen as a data model or ontology. |
| Data source |
The term used in the BioCASE project for an access point. |
| Dublin Core |
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. See http://dublincore.org |
| DiGIR |
Distributed Generic Information Retrieval. See http://digir.net. |
| Federation schema |
A conceptual schema adopted by a federation. |
| GBIF |
Global Biodiversity Information facility. See http://www.gbif.org. |
| GET |
HTTP communication method where form data are encoded as parameters in an extension to a URL. The GET method is principally used to transmit requests for data to a web server (e.g., a simple database search). |
| HTML |
Hypertext Markup Language. A subset of Standard Generalised Markup Language (SGML), used for authoring pages for the World Wide Web. |
| HTTP |
Hypertext Transfer protocol, the commonly used protocol for transmitting requests and documents between applications on the World Wide Web. |
| KVP |
Key-Value Pair. One of the possible encodings for TAPIR requests. |
| OGC |
Open Geospatial Consortium. See http://www.opengeospatial.org. |
| OMG |
Object Management Group. See http://www.omg.org/. |
| NCD |
Natural Collections Descriptions. A TDWG emerging standard for describing collections of natural history material. See http://www.tdwg.org/NCD/TDWG_NCD_Subgroup.htm. |
| normative |
Referring to a standard or set of norms that are understood to be correct. A normative document is one which describes how things ought to be and why. |
| Output Model |
An XML schema language (or potentially other) formatted response structure. |
| POST |
POST is an HTTP communication method that can include any kind of data or command. The data are encoded separately and do not form part of the URL as in a GET message so this method is better for complex, sensitive, lengthy or non-ascii data. |
| protocol |
An agreed format for transmitting data between two or more devices. |
| Provider |
Originally defined as an organisation hosting either a DiGIR or a BioCASe service. In the context of TAPIR, an organisation hosting a TAPIR access point, which may point to several data sources. |
| Provider software |
Software running on a web server that facilitates access to data. |
| RDF Schema |
A language for describing vocabularies in the Resource Description Framework (RDF). See http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/. |
| SDD |
Structure of Descriptive Data. A TDWG, XML-based interoperability standard for descriptive data. |
| SOAP |
Simple Object Access Protocol, an XML-based messaging protocol used for invoking web services and exchanging structured data. |
| TAPIR |
TDWG Access Protocol for Information Retrieval. |
| TCS |
Taxonomic Concept Transfer Schema. An XML schema for the exchange of taxon concepts. See http://tdwg.napier.ac.uk. |
| TDWG |
Taxonomic Databases Working Group. See http://www.tdwg.org/. |
| TSA |
The Species Analyst, a research project developing standards and software tools for sharing biodiversity information. See http://speciesanalyst.net/. |
| UDDI |
Universal Description, Discovery and Integration. UDDI is a specification for maintaining standardised directories of information about web services. |
| URL |
Uniform Resource Locator. The address of a resource on the Internet |
| URI |
Uniform Resource Identifier. A formatted string that serves as an identifier for a resource, typically, but not exclusively, on the Internet. URIs are used in HTML hyperlinks. |
| W3C |
World Wide Web consortium. See http://www.w3c.org. |
| Web Service |
A service based on Internet Protocols, such as HTTP, SMTP or FTP, and also based on XML. |
| WFS |
Web Feature Services. An Open Geospatial Consortium XML-based standard to enable transfer of geographic feature data using Geography Markup Language (GML). See http://schemas.opengis.net/wfs/. |
| wrapper |
Software that allows standardised queries to be run against an underlying database. |
| WSDL |
Web Services Description Language. An XML format for describing Web Services as a set of end points operating on messages containing either document-oriented or procedure-oriented information. WSDL is the language used by UDDI. |
| XMI |
XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) is an OMG standard for exchanging metadata information via XML. See http://www.omg.org/technology/documents/formal/xmi.htm. |
| XML |
Extensible Markup Language developed by the W3C. A means of tagging data for transmission, validation and manipulation. See http://www.w3.org/XML and http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml. |
| XML Schema |
A formal definition of the required and optional structure and content of XML formatted documents within its domain. See http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema. |
| XPath |
Defines a way of locating and processing items in XML documents by using an addressing syntax based on the path through the documents logical tree structure. See http://www3.org/TR/xpath. |
| XQuery |
XML Query Language. A W3C specification for querying XML formatted data. |