I. Short History - why we chose to develop our own database system for data capture and management for the therevid project

A. Biota by Rob Colwell, developed in 4th Dimension™ (4D)

4D developer environment with steep learning curve for non-programmers
4D already relational in summer 1995
not cross platform in summer 1995; unknown at time that it would become so
Biota still in beta in June of 1995 and we needed the flexibility to add more features immediately

B. FileMaker Pro™ (FMP) advantages & disadvantage

Advantages

easy to use, develop in, and maintain
flexibility of field length
multiple layouts
scripts & buttons
indexes selectively (developer controlled)
cgi's (common gateway interface) available for making FMP databases available on the WWW

Disadvantages

unindexed fields must be indexed before using in finds and sorts -- this may take a while on large files --trade-off is even larger files (with indexing turned on in infrequently searched fields) and unstored calculations cannot be indexed.
probably slower than other databases for sheer number crunching
Windows versions can make use of Microsoft's OLE technology (not currently available in Mac version--this is probably a political thing and I personally think it likely that future Mac versions will be able to use OLE imbedding)
Mac version can make use of AppleScript, but this is unavailable in Windows versions (not likely to become available either)

informational

students, generally with little or no entomology background and sometimes without a biology background are doing data input.
fields may be exported as text for import into other databases
quasi-relational in summer 1995; relational Dec. 1995
cross-platform with Windows95 and version 3.0 now relational with Windows 3.1

II. Organization around themes

A. Specimens - specimen-specific information

Specimen database (db)

stage collected; preserved; method of preservation; dissections; molecular studies
pupation & ecolsion dates
associated specimens & kind of association
taxon; type of specimen
determiner and date of determination - people db
conditions during collection: sky, wind, substrate moisture, air temperature, time of day, humidity, light
actions & biological associations (linked from bioassoc db)
geographical and ecological features (linked from geoassoc db)
plant associations - (linked to plantasc db, which is linked to taxa db)
loans and deposits (linked to museums db)

lots - all information linked to Specimen db

locality information
collecting method
date(s)
collector(s) - linked to people db

B. Literature

Reprints database

complete citation whether for book, journal, or unpublished work
translations of titles of articles & books
keyword field

literature citation-related databases:

journals listed in separate database by journal# to cut down on entry errors; full journal title and abbreviation listed
misspell - deviations in taxon spelling (linked also to taxa database) in literature
reprtaxa - lists taxa named in literature and type of treatment
distribn - lists distribution by country and in many cases state or province of each taxon with information listed in literature
priority - tracks changes in priority of a taxon with respect to others: junior & senior homonyms & synonyms (also linked to taxa database)

C. help - engine from ClickWare's ClickHelp(TM)

general help
database specific
context (fields within records) sensitive
easily modified and updated
minuses:

because of the database construction, styles (bold, italics, underline, changes in font size for emphasis, etc.) cannot be used
does not encourage use of graphics because of design, although graphics are possible.

D. tracking questions

entryQ database created to keep track of questions and their resolution
date (creation & modification) and time-stamped
track types of problems through time; get feel for who is having problems and whether they are systematic
search for answers to problems posted earlier

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