[Taxacom] Atlantis Botanic Gardens Taxonomic Database

[Paul J. Morris]

Eric,

   Several others are doing the same sort of thing.  Unless the database
is on the same machine as the client, or the taxonomic tree is small,
designing how data is loaded into the tree control involves tradeoffs
resulting from network transport time.  Both BioLink and the OBIS
Indo-Pacific Mollusc project's database tool use tree controls to browse
the taxonomic heirarchy, but approach the problem differently.  BioLink
used an Active X control that requeried the database on opening each
node of the tree.  The Indo-Pacifc mollusc database loads a set of nodes
and all of their children into a Java Swing tree control.  Querying the
database on opening each node for its children becomes unusable with a
slow network connection, pre-loading an entire large tree becomes
unusable with large taxonomic heirarchies.  With large trees and slow
network latencies, adaptively adding child nodes trying to keep ahead of
a user opening nodes on the control might be the best solution.  in the
Indo-Pacific Mollusc Project the browser lets the user preload all of an
entire subtree (a family) or a set of subtrees (several families),
reducing the initial delay from that involved in loading the entire
taxonomic heirarchy, and operating much faster than querying the
database for children on each mouse click that opened a parent node.   

http://data.acnatsci.org/obis/docs/usingtoolkit.html

Merry Snailing,
-Paul

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 16:52:55 +0100
Eric Gouda <e.j.gouda at bio.uu.nl> wrote:

> As far as I know, it is the only taxonomic database presenting the 
> taxonomic data in a tree structure,

--------------
Paul J. Morris
Biodiversity Informatics Manager
Harvard University Herbaria/Museum of Comparative Zoölogy
mole at morris.net  AA3SD  PGP public key available