Biosafety Clearing-House
Solutions for National Participation
First Regional Advisors Meeting, Delhi, INDIA, 26 April 2007
Philippe Leblond
Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity
Agenda – First Session
Release Plan (15 minutes)
Version Numbering Scheme
Change History
Support Lifecycle
Overview of recent changes
BCH Web Service (version 3.0) (15 minutes)
Documentation and Quick Starts
BCH Web Service Utility
Agenda – Second Session
Hermes Hosted Application (30 minutes)
Introduction and design considerations
Support and sustainability
Creating a NBCH based on Hermes (demonstration)
BCH Ajax Plug-In (15 minutes)
Integrating the Plug-In to a National Web Site
Integrating the Plug-In to the Canadian Application
Hands-On Session on Hermes (30 minutes)
Release Plan
Driven by COP-MOP decisions
Major releases match COP-MOP meetings
v2
MOP2
v3
MOP3
v4
MOP4
v5
Current version of the BCH is 3.4
MOP5
Release Plan (continued…)
The SCBD development work plan is
based on quarterly releases
March, June, September & December
History of changes is available in the
news section of the BCH Central Portal
Recommendation from the BCH-IAC
Release Plan (continued…)
BCH Interoperability Services changes are
categorized into minor and major versions
Version 3.4 is the current version
Version 4.0 is the next major version
For upward compatibility, interface of the
BCH Web Service does not change
between minor versions
Support Lifecycle
Maximizes resources by reducing the amount of
code to maintain and support
Recommendation from the BCH-IAC
Deprecated Version
Previous Version
Current Version
Current and previous versions are supported
Deprecated version is phased-out after one year
Support Lifecycle (continued…)
Concretely, this means that version 2.0 will be
phased-out one year after the release of the
version 4.0
Version 4.0 will be released after COP-MOP/4 around 2009
Version 2.0 will be supported at least until 2010
Version 2.0
Version 3.0
Version 4.0
The SCBD will develop and make available
migration guidelines
Questions?
Next:
Documentation of the Interoperability Services
Documentation
The Secretariat has recently recently put a
lot of effort into improving and making
more accessible the documentation of the
Interoperability Mechanisms
The documentation of the version 3.0 of
the Interoperability Mechanisms is
available at:
http://bch.biodiv.org/help/interoperability/webservice3/
Documentation (continued…)
Common Formats
XML Schemas, diagrams, links to CV
Web Service
Methods, SOAP messages
Quick Starts
Samples in C#, VB.NET, Java, Python and
Perl for every method
Articles
Learning tool – BCH Web Service Utility
Questions?
Agenda – Second Session
Hermes Hosted Application (40 minutes)
Introduction and design considerations
Support and sustainability
Creating a NBCH based on Hermes (demonstration)
BCH Ajax Plug-In (15 minutes)
Integrating the Plug-In to a National Web Site
Integrating the Plug-In to the Canadian Application
Hands-On Session on Hermes (45 minutes)
Overview
Hermes is an application developed by the
Secretariat which provides the building
blocks of a national BCH website.
Hermes instances are hosted on the
Secretariat’s servers.
Overview
Hermes is an application developed by the
Secretariat which provides the building
blocks of a national BCH website.
Hermes instances are hosted on the
Secretariat’s servers.
Hermes provides
Content Management System (CMS)
Simple wiki-like syntax
Interoperability with the BCH Central Portal
Support for all common formats
Advanced search functionalities
Security (SSL authentication)
Hermes CMS
Allows end users to create and maintain their
national website online
Does not require any technical skills
Hermes wiki-like syntax
Hermes provides an easy wiki-like syntax for
providing content
Simpler than HTML
Does not required any IT knowledge
Eases changes tracking and translation
Ensures style consistency
Interoperability
Fully interoperable with the BCH
Provides support for all common formats
Maintained by the Secretariat
Transition to next version of the interoperability
services will be transparent
Security
Provides easy user management
Shares accounts and passwords with the BCH
Provides secure authentication (SSL)
Support
99.999% uptime through redundancy
Real-time monitoring
On-site and off-site backups
Assistance through SCBD and RAs
Questions?
Next:
SCBD Hosting Services
SCBD Hosting Services
The Secretariat offers free web hosting for
solutions based on Hermes or on the
Canadian Application.
Although the hosting services are offered
by the Secretariat, the national site can be
placed under any domain name.
E.g. http://www.nbch.ec
Country is responsible for obtaining the
domain name
The Secretariat offers DNS services
Infrastructure – Equipment
Security
Reliability
Scalability
Availability
Performance
99.999%
uptime
Infrastructure – IP Network
Direct 100 Mbps Fibre Optic link to
Internet backbone
How to proceed ?
Hermes
Instances are setup by the Secretariat
MOU is not required (may be optional)
Canadian Application
Instances are setup by the GOC
A three-party MOU needs to be signed
between the country, GOC and SCBD
Questions?
Next:
Creating a National BCH based on Hermes
(demonstration)