NMITA Database Organization and Model

A. Full Database Model (under development)

Our full database model was developed by Budd, Golden, and Fortunato (see NMITA Staff) using ERwin 2.1 through consultation with Brenda Ulin (Senior Systems Analyst, Institutional Data and Data Management (IDDM), Information Technology Services, Univ. Iowa). It is patterned after the Information Model for Biological Collections of the Association of Systematic Collections (ASC) - March 1993 version, and conforms with the Invertebrate Paleontology Collections (IPC) Model developed at the NSF Collections Computerization Workshop following NAPC-6 in June 1996. It expands on the ASC model by adding entities for morphologic characters, measurements, and illustrations (e.g., photos, drawings & diagrams). It consists of 71 entities in five major subject areas, for which general descriptions and entity relationship diagrams are below:

Taxon (entities associated with TaxonName)
Specimen (entities associated with CollectingUnit)
Locality (entities associated with CollectingEvent)
Literature (entities associated with Publication)
Illustrations (entities associated with Illustration)

For further documentation of the full NMITA Database Model, see:

Screens for entering data into the full model are currently being developed.

B. Databases used in currently available dynamic searches

During the first stage of the project (through January 2001), dynamic searches are being developed using several smaller databases whose structure is based on denormalized versions of the full database model. Because different contributors have provided different data fields, slightly different models have been used for each database. Currently available searches include--

Zooxanthellate corals (dynamic searches of genera and species within the family Faviidae)
Identification tool for zooxanthellate coral genera (dynamic search of coral morphologic data)
Bivalve molluscs (dynamic search of genera/subgenera)
Fish (dynamic searches of families and species)
Geographic maps (dynamic search of Dominican Republic occurrences)

For a NMITA Oracle Programming Manual (by S. P. Jones, April 2000)

Last updated on April 29, 2000-afb.