Collaborative Information Management System for Science Domains

Abstract

With the increasing need for collaboration in different science domains, a lot of research activities are now focused on the mechanisms and infrastructures supporting advanced collaborations among pre-existing, distributed, heterogeneous, and autonomous organizations. Collaborating organizations typically share some common objectives and in order to achieve them they need to share their information and resources. One prominent requirement is to access each other’s data or databases through a secure infrastructure. Biodiversity is one such science domain. Challenges in biodiversity information management are being addressed in the project ENBI (European Network for Biodiversity Information) (ENBI, n.d.). A summary of the information management challenges in different science domains is given in the second section, Information Management Challenges in Science Domains. In this context, the CIMS introduces promising solutions to cope with these challenges. In general terms, CIMS refers to the set of components and mechanisms that together constitute a generic information manipulation framework to support the interoperation and data sharing among collaborating members (Guevara-Masis, Unal, Kaletas, Afsarmanesh, & Hertzberger, 2004). The proposed CIMS involves three main paradigms and technologies, consisting of: (1) federated database architecture, (2) virtual organizations paradigm, and (3) grid technology. Introductory information about these technologies and paradigms and their major benefits are covered in the third section, paradigms and technologies.